THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT 


PRINCIPLES    OF   WESTERN 
CIVILISATION 

BEING  THE  FIRST  VOLUME  OF  A  SYSTEM 
OF  EVOLUTIONARY  PHILOSOPHY 


PRINCIPLES  OF  WESTERN 
CIVILISATION 


BY 


BENJAMIN    KIDD 

AUTHOR  OF  "SOCIAL  EVOLUTION,"  "THE  CONTROL  OF  THE 
TROPICS,"  ETC. 


THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON:   MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 
I9O2 

All  rigktt  rtttrved 


COPYRIGHT,  igoa, 
Bv  THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped  January,  1902. 


XortaooO 
J.  8.  Cushin?  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith 
Norwood  Aim.  U.S.A. 


College 
Library 


0 

CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   I 

PAGE 

THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA   .  i 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  SHIFTING  OF  THE  CENTRE  OF  SIGNIFICANCE  IN 
THE  EVOLUTIONARY  HYPOTHESIS  —  THE  PRINCIPLE 
OF  PROJECTED  EFFICIENCY 31 

CHAPTER   III 
THE  POSITION  IN  MODERN  THOUGHT      ....      68 

CHAPTER   IV 
THE  PHENOMENON  OF  WESTERN  LIBERALISM         .        .     101 

CHAPTER  V 
THE  PROBLEM 140 

CHAPTER  VI 
THE  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT        .        .        .        -155 

CHAPTER   VII 

THE  PASSING  OF  THE  PRESENT  UNDER  THE  CONTROL 

OF  THE  FUTURE  200 


vi  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  VIII 

PAGE 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY  IN  WEST- 
ERN HISTORY:  FIRST  STAGE 246 

CHAPTER  IX 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY  IN  WEST- 
ERN HISTORY:  SECOND  STAGE          ....    296 

CHAPTER  X 
THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT 344 

CHAPTER  XI 
TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE 398 

APPENDIX 483 

INDEX 525 


PRINCIPLES   OF   WESTERN 
CIVILISATION 


WESTERN   CIVILISATION 

CHAPTER   I 

THE    CLOSE   OF   AN   ERA 

IT  would  be  impossible  for  any  informed  observer 
at  the  present  time,  in  the  midst  of  our  Western 
civilisation,  to  remain  altogether  unconscious  of  the 
character  and  dimensions  of  a  vast  process  of  change 
which,  beneath  the  outward  surface  of  events,  is  in 
progress  in  the  world  around  us.  The  great  contro- 
versies, scientific  and  religious,  which  filled  the  nine- 
teenth century,  have  broadened  out  far  beyond  the 
narrow  boundaries  within  which  the  specialists  imag- 
ined them  to  be  confined.  The  older  antagonists  in 
many  of  these  controversies  still  continue,  as  they  will 
doubtless  continue  to  the  end,  to  confront  each  other 
in  the  same  attitudes  of  opposition  as  at  the  beginning. 
But  the  general  mind  is  no  longer  closely  engaged 
with  the  past  aspects  of  these  disputes.  It  is  becom- 
ing more  and  more  preoccupied  with  the  larger 
problems  beyond,  which  the  new  knowledge  has 
brought  fully  into  view,  and  with  the  immense  social 
and  political  issues  which  are  now  seen  to  be  ultimately 
involved. 

The  precursor  of  every  great  period  of  social  and 


2  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

political  reconstruction  has  invariably  been,  as  John 
Stuart  Mill  has  pointed  out,  "a  great  change  in  the 
opinions  and  modes  of  thinking  of  society."  l  There 
is  no  era  in  Western  history  which  can  offer  any 
parallel  in  this  respect  to  the  period  in  which  we  are 
living.  There  is  no  department  of  knowledge  dealing 
with  man  in  society,  however  authoritative  its  tradi- 
tions, however  exclusive  and  self-contained  its  position, 
which  is  not  separated  now  by  an  immense  interval 
from  its  standpoint  fifty  years  ago.  The  modern 
doctrine  of  evolution  is  only  the  last  of  a  long  chain 
of  sequences.  But  the  changes  which  it  has  already 
effected  in  the  tendencies  of  the  deeper  processes  of 
thought  altogether  exceed  in  import  any  previously 
experienced.  Even  its  general  results  have  a  signifi- 
cance which  immediately  arrests  the  attention  of  the 
thoughtful  observer.  The  final  aspect  of  authority 
and  completeness  which  it  has  given  to  the  work 
accomplished  by  a  set  of  revolutionary  tendencies  in 
thought,  which  for  four  centuries  have  struggled  with 
the  most  conservative  elements  in  our  civilisation,  has 
so  profoundly  influenced  the  average  mind,  that  the 
culminating  effect  of  the  revolution  has  been  felt 
almost  as  if  the  meaning  of  the  whole  movement 
had  been  compressed  into  the  lifetime  of  a  single 
generation.  The  Western  intellect  has,  as  it  were, 
passed  at  last  through  the  initiatory  phase  of  what 
Hegel  called  the  terrible  discipline  of  self-knowledge. 
The  tendencies  which  John  Addington  Symonds 
beheld  slowly  transforming  our  civilisation  —  the 
audacious  speculation,  the  bold  explanatory  studies, 
the  sound  methods  of  criticism,  the  free  range  of  the 

1  System  of  Logic,  by  John  Stuart  Mill,  vi.  c.  x. 


l  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN   ERA  3 

intellect  over  every  field  of  knowledge1  —  have  all 
but  accomplished  the  first  stage  of  their  work. 

The  extraordinary  reach  of  the  changes  which  the 
evolutionary  doctrine  is,  to  all  appearance,  destined  to 
accomplish  is  not  as  yet  fully  perceived  by  any  school 
of  thought.  But,  if  the  attempt  be  made  to  grasp 
the  application  of  what  we  may  now  distinguish  to  be 
one  of  its  central  principles,  some  general  idea  may 
be  obtained  of  the  remarkable  character  of  the  results 
towards  which  our  Western  world  is  rapidly  moving. 

Hitherto  nearly  all  the  systems  of  political  and 
social  philosophy  that  have  controlled  the  mind  of 
our  civilisation,  and  all  the  schemes  of  human  con- 
duct and  of  human  interest  which  they  have  involved, 
have  had  one  leading  feature  in  common.  They  have 
been  all  considered,  in  effect,  to  revolve  round  a  fixed 
and  central  principle;  namely,  the  interests  of  the 
existing  individuals  considered  either  separately  as 
individuals,  or  collectively  as  members  of  political 
society.  But  the  point  of  view  in  all  these  attempts 
has  been  altered  by  a  revolution,  the  significance  of 
which  is  without  any  parallel  in  the  history  of  thought. 
For  what  we  are  coming  to  see  is  that,  if  we  accept 
the  law  of  Natural  Selection  as  a  controlling  principle 
in  the  process  of  our  social  evolution,  we  must,  by 
inherent  necessity,  also  accept  it  as  operating  in  the 
manner  in  which,  in  the  long  run,  it  produces  the 
largest  and  most  effective  results.  Our  attention 
throughout  the  course  of  human  history  has  been 
concentrated  hitherto  on  the  interests  of  the  indi- 
viduals who  for  the  time  being  comprised  what  we 

1  The  Renaissance  in  Italy,  by  John  Addington  Symonds,  vol.  vii. 
c.  xiv. 


4  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

call  society.  Yet  what  we  are  now  brought  to  see  is 
that  the  overwhelming  weight  of  numbers,  as  of 
interests,  in  the  evolutionary  process,  is  never  in  the 
present.  It  is  always  in  the  future.  It  is  not  the 
interests  of  those  existing  individuals  with  which  all 
our  systems  of  thought  and  of  political  science  have 
concerned  themselves,  but  the  interests  of  the  future, 
which  weight  the  meaning  of  the  evolutionary  pro- 
cess in  history.  We  are,  in  other  words,  brought 
face  to  face  with  the  fact  that,  in  the  scientific  formula 
of  the  life  of  any  existing  type  of  social  order  destined 
to  maintain  its  place  in  the  future,  the  interests  of 
these  existing  individuals,  with  which  we  have  been 
so  preoccupied,  possess  no  meaning,  except  so  far  as 
they  are  included  in,  and  are  subordinate  to,  the  inter- 
ests of  a  developing  system  of  social  order  the  over- 
whelming proportion  of  whose  members  are  still  in 
the  future. 

Never  before  has  a  principle  of  such  reach  in  the 
social  sciences  emerged  into  view.  We  look  at  all 
the  processes  of  our  civilisation  in  an  entirely 
new  light.  How  far  we  are  carried  beyond  all  existing 
theories  of  the  phenomenon  of  modern  democracy  is 
at  once  apparent.  For  in  nearly  all  these  theories 
the  observer  perceives  that  he  is  always  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  same  fact.  The  intellectual  outlook 
everywhere  shuts  down  around  him  along  one  definite 
line,  namely,  that  which  marks  the  horizon  bounding 
the  interests  included  within  the  limits  of  the  political 
consciousness  of  the  existing  individuals.  Almost  all 
the  systems  of  political  and  social  theory,  which  en- 
deavoured during  the  nineteenth  century  to  formulate 
for  us  the  principles  behind  the  unfolding  of  the  pro- 


I  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA  5 

cesses  of  Western  democracy,  have  been  constructed 
bodily  within  this  narrow  foreground.  Through  all 
the  literature  which  has  come  down  to  us  from  the 
Revolution  in  France,  through  nearly  all  the  present 
literature  of  the  social  revolt  in  Germany,  through  all 
the  theories  of  that  school  of  social  philosophy  long 
dominant  in  England,  developed  by  Bentham,  Austin, 
James  Mill,  Stewart,  Malthus,  Grote,  Ricardo,  and 
J.  S.  Mill,  there  runs  one  fundamental  conception  into 
which  all  others  are  ultimately  fitted ;  namely,  that 
the  science  of  society  is  the  science  of  the  inter- 
ests of  those  capable  at  any  particular  moment  of 
exercising  the  rights  of  universal  suffrage,  and  that 
the  interest  of  society  is  always  the  same  thing  as  the 
interest  of  the  individuals  comprised  within  the  limits 
of  its  political  consciousness. 

Yet  what  we  see  now  is  that  the  theory  of  society 
as  a  whole  has  been  lifted  to  an  entirely  different 
plane.  For  if  there  is  one  principle  more  than  an- 
other which  the  evolutionary  hypothesis  tends  to  set 
forth  in  a  clear  light  it  is  that  the  forces  which  are 
shaping  the  development  of  progressive  peoples  are 
not  primarily  concerned  with  these  interests  at  all. 
The  winning  peoples  who  now  inherit  the  world  are 
they  whose  history  in  the  past  has  been  the  theatre  of 
the  operation  of  principles  the  meaning  of  which  must 
have  at  every  point  transcended  the  meaning  of  the 
interests  of  those  who  at  any  time  comprised  the  ex- 
isting members  of  society.  Nay,  more,  the  people  in 
the  present  who  are  already  destined  to  inherit  the 
future  are  not  they  whose  institutions  revolve  round 
any  ideal  schemes  of  the  interests  of  existing  mem- 
bers of  society.  They  arc  simply  the  peoples  who 


6  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

already  bear  on  their  shoulders  the  burden  of  the 
principles  with  which  the  interests  of  the  future  are 
identified. 

The  controlling  centre  of  the  evolutionary  process 
in  our  social  history  is,  in  short,  not  in  the  present  at 
all,  but  in  the  future.  It  is  in  favour  of  the  interests 
of  the  future  that  Natural  Selection  continually  dis- 
criminates. The  majority  with  which  the  principles 
that  are  working  out  the  process  of  our  social  de- 
velopment are  primarily  concerned  is  a  majority  that 
never  votes.  It  is  that  silent  majority  which  is  al- 
ways in  the  future.  The  process  of  life  included  in 
Western  history  is,  we  begin  to  dimly  distinguish,  a 
process  of  development  which  is,  beyond  doubt,  over- 
laid with  a  meaning  that  no  school  of  scientific  thought 
in  the  past  has  enunciated.  Our  Western  civilisation, 
we  are  beginning  now  to  understand,  must  be,  over 
and  above  everything^  else,  the  history  of  a  movement 
through  which,  in  all  the  spheres  of  ethics,  of  politics, 
of  philosophy,  of  economics,  and  of  religion,  there  runs 
the  dominating  meaning  of  a  cosmic  struggle,  in 
which  not  simply  the  individual  but  society  itself  is 
being  broken  to  the  ends  of  a  social  efficiency,  which 
the  human  intellect  can  never  more  include  within 
the  limits  of  any  theory  of  utilitarian  politics  in  the 
state. 

The  extraordinary  reach  of  this  new  master-prin- 
ciple in  the  science  of  society  only  continues  to  more 
deeply  impress  the  mind  on  reflection.  All  the  first 
attempts  to  apply  the  conception  of  evolution  to  hu- 
man society  —  made,  of  necessity,  by  writers  whose 
systems  of  thought  were  already  practically  formed 
before  being  influenced  by  the  new  knowledge  —  have, 


I  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA  7 

we  see,  moved  within  the  circle  of  an  idea  inherited 
from  the  past  which  is  no  longer  tenable.  The  ruling 
conception  which  dominated  nearly  all  theories  of  our 
social  development  in  the  nineteenth  century  was 
that  the  central  feature  of  our  social  progress  con- 
sisted in  the  struggle  between  the  present  and  the 
past.  This  is  the  conception  which  expressed  itself 
with  such  emphasis  in  the  social  writings  of  the 
English  Utilitarians  in  the  middle  decades  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  But  it  was  also  the  central  prin- 
ciple around  which  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  as  an  early 
exponent  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  constructed  the 
theory  of  social  and  political  development  set  forth 
in  his  Synthetic  Philosophy.1  It  is  the  leading  idea 
which  expresses  itself  in  Mr.  Spencer's  conception  of 
the  modern  development  towards  industrial  democ- 
racy.2 It  is  the  idea,  continually  reiterated,  which 
underlies  his  theory  of  ecclesiastical  institutions  as 
forms  through  which  the  rule  of  the  past  expresses 

1  Spencer's  dispute  with  the  Utilitarians  (cf.  Principles  of  Ethics, 
§§  21-110)  never  included  any  difference  on  this  account.  It  was,  in 
effect,  only  a  difference  between  that  Utilitarianism  (as  represented  by 
James  and  J.  S.  Mill)  "  which  recognises  only  the  principles  of^onduct 
reached  by  induction,"  and  the  Utilitarianism  (as  represented  by 
Spencer)  "which  deduces  these  principles  from  the  processes  of  life  as 
carried  on  under  established  conditions  of  existence"  (Principles  of 
Ethics,  §  21 ).  Spencer's  theory  of  social  development  remained 
throughout,  even  on  its  ethical  side,  simply  a  theory  of  movement 
towards  "  an  associated  state,"  where  "  the  lives  of  each  and  all  may 
be  the  greatest  possible  in  length  and  breadth  "  (§  48).  It  was,  that  is 
to  say,  a  theory  of  the  realisation  of  the  interests  of  the  ascendant 
present,  contemplating  an  eventual  state  of  social  order  in  which  there 
should  be  no  social  claims  at  variance  with  the  claims  of  the  individual 
(cf.  §  49,  Principles  of  Ethics). 

aCf.  Principles  of  Sociology,  §§  434-582. 


8  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

itself.1  It  is  the  fundamental  conception  upon  which 
he  has  built  his  principles  of  psychology,  in  which 
—  Hume's  idea2  being  carried  a  step  farther — the 
content  of  the  human  mind  is  considered  as  related 
simply  to  past  experiences  either  of  the  individual  or 
of  the  race.3  But,  as  we  see  now,  the  character  of 
the  evolutionary  drama  in  progress  in  our  civilisation 
can  never  more  be  viewed  by  the  human  intellect  as 
dominated  by  such  a  ruling  principle.  It  is,  we  see, 
the  meaning,  not  of  the  relation  of  the  present  to  the 
past,  but  of  the  relation  of  the  present  to  the  future, 
to  which  all  other  meanings  are  subordinate,  -and 
which  controls  all  the  ultimate  tendencies  of  the  pro- 
cess of  progress  in  which  we  are  living.* 

Since  the  great  development  of  ideas  to  which 
Lessing,  Herder,  Jacobi,  Kant,  Fichte,  Schelling, 
and  Hegel  contributed,  reached  its  full  limits  in  Ger- 
many, and  became  in  part  discredited  in  the  land 
which  produced  it,  it  may  be  perceived  that  Western 
thought,  so  far  as  it  has  endeavoured  to  rest  itself  on 
a  scientific  basis  of  phenomenology,  has  come  to  pur- 
sue a  clearly  defined  line  of  development  along  which 
it  has  slowly  contracted  upon  one  central  idea.  Fol- 
lowing this  line  of  development  in  the  movement 

1C(.  Principles  of  Sociology,  §§  583-660. 

2  Treatise  on  Human  Nature,  i.  and  iii. 

*Cf.  Principles  of  Biology,  §§  297-314  ;  Principles  of  Psychology, 
§§  223-273  and  430  ;  Principles  of  Ethics,  §§  24-62. 

4  We  may,  in  short,  apply  to  the  future  what  Mr.  Albion  W.  Small 
has  so  strikingly  said  of  the  individual  in  modern  sociology :  "  Sociol- 
ogy is  still  struggling  with  this  preposterous  initial  fact  of  the  indi- 
vidual. He  is  the  only  possible  social  unit,  and  he  is  no  longer  a 
thinkable  possibility.  He  is  the  only  real  presence,  and  he  is  never 
present  "  (American  Journal  of  Sociology,  vol.  v.  4,  "  The  Scope  of 
Sociology"). 


I  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA  9 

begun  in  England  with  the  English  deists,  carried 
still  further  on  the  continent  of  Europe  under  the 
theories  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  in  its  re- 
turn wave  culminating  in  England  in  that  utilitarian 
theory  of  ethics  and  of  the  state,  in  the  ascendant  in 
England  during  the  greater  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  we  have  the  meaning  of  this  central  concep- 
tion now  clearly  in  view.  In  ethics  it  found  its  con- 
sistent expression  in  the  unhesitating  assertion  that, 
in  the  last  resort,  human  conduct  required  no  princi- 
ple of  support  whatever  but  that  of  self-interest  in 
society  well  understood.  This  was  the  assertion  which, 
developed  in  the  theories  of  continental  writers  like 
Condorcet,  Diderot,  and  Helv6tius,  reached  in  one  of 
its  phases  in  England  its  highest  expression  in  the 
writings  of  John  Stuart  Mill.1  It  is  an  assertion 
which,  under  many  forms,  exercises  at  the  present 
time  a  dominant  influence  in  a  wide  range  of  ethical 
thought  throughout  our  civilisation.2  Carried  into 
the  sphere  of  religion  the  same  fundamental  concep- 
tion had  its  correlative  affirmation  equally  clearly  and 
equally  unhesitatingly  expressed.  This  was  that  the 
direction  of  progress  in  our  Western  world  was  to 
empty  the  concepts  of  the  system  of  religious  belief 
associated  with  our  civilisation  of  that  distinctive 
quality  which  projected  their  meaning  beyond  the 

1  Cf.  Utilitarianism,  by  J.  S.  Mill ;  also  his  System  of  Logic and  Three 
Essays  on  Religion. 

2  See    The  Methods  of  Ethics,  by  Henry  Sidgwick,  for   the   later 
position  ;    and  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  by  T.  II.  Green,  B.  iv.  c.  iv., 
particularly  §  366,  for  a  definition  of  the  fundamental  difficulty  it  has 
involved.      One   of  the    principal    recent    growing  points  in  English 
thought  of  an  opposing  development  has  been  supplied  in  the  writings 
of  Edward  Caird. 


IO  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

limits  of  social  consciousness.1  Translated,  finally, 
into  a  theory  of  our  social  development,  it  became 
that  assertion  now  fully  in  view  in  the  most  widely 
read  class  of  social  literature  in  Germany,  namely, 
that  the  interests  of  society  being  the  same  thing  as 
the  interests  of  its  component  members,  for  the  time 
being,  the  economic  factor  is,  therefore,  the  ruling 
factor  in  human  history ;  and  that  all  human  beliefs 
and  institutions  are  ultimately  the  outcome  of  eco- 
nomic conditions  —  that  is  to  say,  of  the  rivalry  of 
interests  between  the  existing  members  of  society.2 
As  formerly  we  used  to  be  told  that  all  economics 
were  relative  to  history,  so  now,  says  Mr.  J.  Bonar,3 
we  are  asked  to  believe  "  that  all  history  is  relative  to 
economics,  men  having  been  made  what  they  are  by 
economical  causes."  4 

The  inter-relation  of  all  these  phases  of  thought, 
the  clear  and  consistently  developed  premises  upon 
which  they  rest,  and  the  central  conception  from 
which  they  all  proceed,  is  at  once  apparent.  What 

1  Compare  James  Mill's  Ethics,  or  his  article  in  the  London  Review, 
1835,  quoted  by  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  in  The  English  Utilitarians,  vol.  ii. 
pp.  6l,  62,  with  Mr.  Bernard  Bosanquet's  essay  on  "  The  Future  of 
Religious  Observance  "  {The  Civilisation  of  Christendom}. 

3  Cf.  Capital,  by  Karl  Marx,  c.  i.  s.  4,  and  German  Social  Democ- 
racy, by  Bertrand  Russell,  1.  i.  See  Professor  Achille  Loria's  Les  bases 
economiques  de  la  constitution  sociale  (French  translation  by  A.  Bou- 
chard) for  the  current  Italian  form  of  this  doctrine. 

*  The  Economic  Journal,  vol.  viii.  p.  443. 

*  Mr.  Bonar's  remark  on  the  doctrine  goes  to  the  root  of  the  subject. 
"  Both  dogmas  seem  not  so  much  obviously  untrue  as  obviously  beyond 
testing,  for  if  all  is  tainted  with  relativity  these  dogmas  themselves  will 
be  so  tainted,  and  we  could  not  have  formulated  either  of  them  without 
unclothing  ourselves  of  one  epoch  and  rising  above  time  and  circum- 
stance "  {Ibid.  p.  443). 


I  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN   ERA  II 

they  represent  is  a  theory  of  progress  in  which  the 
ascendency  of  the  present  is  regarded  as  the  ideal 
towards  which  we  are  travelling,  and  in  which  the 
struggle  that  this  ascendant  present  maintains  against 
the  forms,  the  beliefs,  and  institutions  under  which 
the  past  had  hitherto  ruled  it,  occupies  the  whole 
field  of  intellectual  vision.  The  theory  of  our  social 
progress  in  all  its  parts  becomes,  in  short,  simply  a 
theory  of  movement  towards  a  fixed  social  and  politi- 
cal condition  in  which  this  self-conscious  and  self-con- 
tained present  shall  be  at  last  completely  emancipated 
from  the  past  in  conditions  in  which  the  gratification 
of  the  desires,  and  the  furtherance  of  the  interests,  of 
the  component  individuals  shall  have  been  made  as 
complete  as  possible.1 

1  Compare  the  chapter  "  Of  the  Stationary  State,"  J.  S.  Mill's  Politi- 
cal Economy,  book  iv.,  with  Marx's  Capital,  chaps,  i.  s.  4,  and  cxxxii.  ; 
also  with  Spencer's  Principles  of  Ethics,  §§  48,  49.  Mr.  James  Bonar 
thus  describes  the  causes  which  tended  to  impress  the  German  socialists 
with  the  idea  that  all  social  progress  is  nothing  more  than  economic 
progress:  "What  impressed  the  German  socialists — Marx,  Lasalle, 
Engels,  Kautsky  —  was  the  demonstrably  economic  character  of  many 
political  changes  of  the  last  300  years.  In  the  course  of  industrial 
changes  the  mediaeval  landowners  gave  up  their  power  to  the  capitalists, 
and  the  capitalists  to  the  employers  of  labour.  Therefore,  said  the 
German  socialists,  all  is  due  to  a  change  in  the  prevailing  form  of  pro- 
duction. Where  agriculture  prevails  we  have  a  territorial  aristocracy, 
a  certain  political  system,  and  certain  social  institutions  and  laws  ; 
where  commerce  prevails  we  have  another  system  ;  where  manufacture, 
a  third.  This  explains  the  rise  of  the  middle  classes  into  political 
power,  but  also  the  advance  of  the  working  classes  as  a  power  that  will 
displace  them  and  be  (as  we  are  told  it  ought  to  be)  all  in  all.  As  in 
the  economic  theory  of  Marx  and  Engels  all  value  is  from  labour,  so  on 
the  great  scale  of  politics  all  power  is  to  be  with  the  labouring  class. 
Economic  progress  is  thus  the  only  real  progress ;  the  essence  of  all 
history  is  economics ;  the  essence  of  all  economics  is  labour  "  (  The 
Economic  Journal,  vol.  viii.  No.  32). 


12  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

There  has  been  no  system  of  ideas  that  has  ever 
held  the  mind  of  the  world  from  which  the  intellec- 
tual basis  has  been  so  completely  struck  away.  That 
theory  of  human  religions  which  so  many  minds  have 
followed  and  surpassed  Mr.  Spencer  in  developing 
merely  as  a  theory  of  survivals  in  the  present ;  that 
theory  of  psychology,  developed  from  Hume  to  Hux- 
ley, in  which  the  content  of  the  human  mind  is  viewed 
simply  as  a  condition  in  which  the  present  is  related 
to  past  experience  either  in  the  individual  or  in  the 
race ;  that  widely  prevalent  conception  of  social  prog- 
ress developed  from  Voltaire  to  Marx  as  a  movement 
towards  a  state  in  which  the  self-conscious  present  is 
to  be  finally  organised  towards  the  complete  expres- 
sion of  its  own  ascendant  interests  ;  has  each  passed 
definitely  into  the  background  never  more  to  receive 
the  authoritative  assent  of  the  human  intellect  to 
its  premises.  It  is  the  shadow  of  the  infinite  future 
which  rests  now  on  the  process  of  progress.  It  is  to 
the  future  and  not  to  the  past  that  the  theory  of 
development  has  now  become  primarily  related.  We 
see  now  how  true  was  the  instinct  with  which  the 
half-reluctant  Schopenhauer  dimly  perceived  the 
greatness  of  Kant  in  his  hold  upon  the  infinite.1 
For  amongst  the  winning  sections  of  the  race,  the 
direction  of  development  at  every  growing  point  of 
the  human  mind,  whether  we  be  conscious  of  it  or 
not,  must,  we  see,  be  along  the  line  where  the  present 
is  being  increasingly  drawn  into  the  sweep  of  an  in- 
tegrating process,  the  controlling  meaning  of  which 
is  once  and  for  ever  projected  beyond  the  content  of 

1  Studies  in  Pessimism,  a  series  of  essays  by  Arthur  Schopenhauer, 
translated  by  T.  Bailey  Saunders,  p.  34. 


I  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA  13 

all  theories  of  the  interests  of  society  as  included 
within  the  limits  of  merely  political  consciousness. 

It  is  impossible  to  look  round  us  in  our  civilisa- 
tion at  the  present  time  without  perceiving  how  far- 
reaching  is  the  process  of  change  involved  in  such  a 
shifting  of  the  centre  of  significance  in  thought  as 
is  here  involved.  Systems  of  theory  that  have 
nourished  the  intellectual  life  of  the  world  for  centu- 
ries have  become  in  large  part  obsolete.  They  may 
retain  for  a  space  the  outward  appearance  of  author- 
ity. But  the  foundations  upon  which  they  rested 
have  been  bodily  undermined.  It  is  only  a  ques- 
tion of  time  till  the  ruin  which  has  overtaken  them 
will  have  become  a  commonplace  of  Western  know- 
ledge. 

If  attention  is  directed  to  the  tendencies  in  prog- 
ress beneath  the  surface  of  events  in  the  political  life 
of  the  time,  the  impression  made  on  the  mind  by  the 
position  in  thought  here  described  cannot  fail  to  con- 
tinue to  be  deepened.  Any  one  who  has  mastered 
what  may  be  described  as  the  psychology  of  Western 
politics  in  the  modern  period,  must  have  been  im- 
pressed at  some  stage  of  his  study  —  and  probably  all 
the  more  so  if  he  has  been  able  to  detach  himself 
from  the  local  egoisms  of  nationality  —  with  the 
world-wide  influence  which  the  system  of  ideas  be- 
hind the  political  party  representing  the  cause  of 
progress  in  England  has  exercised  on  the  develop- 
ment of  our  civilisation  during  that  period. 

The  political  party  in  England  which  has  been 
most  closely  identified  with  the  cause  of  progress  in 
the  past  has  inherited  what  is  beyond  doubt,  and 
judging  it  from  many  standpoints  widely  removed 


14  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

from  each  other,  the  greatest  tradition  in  politics 
which  our  civilisation  has  produced.  The  movement 
with  which  that  party  is  associated  is  directly  related 
to  almost  all  the  principal  results  included  in  the 
modern  drama  of  progress.  From  the  period  of  the 
English  revolution  in  the  seventeenth  century  — 
the  events  of  which  were  held  to  have  justified  Pitt 
in  the  minds  of  his  contemporaries,  and  even  before 
the  close  of  the  century  which  followed,  in  describing 
the  doctrine  of  the  right  of  princes,  otherwise  than 
as  derived  from  the  people,  as  already  "sunk  into 
contempt  and  almost  oblivion"1  —  down  to  the 
modern  period  —  in  which  the  industrial  and  politi- 
cal expansion  of  England  and  the  United  States 
have  rendered  all  recent  political  and  economic 
science  scarcely  more  than  a  study  or  a  criticism  of 
the  principles  under  which  that  expansion  has  taken 
place  —  it  is  the  ideas  associated  with  the  movement 
which  the  party  of  progress  in  England  represents 

1  The  words  were  used  in  the  House  of  Commons  in  1 788,  in  the 
debate  on  the  right  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  to  the  unrestricted  regency. 
The  following  is  the  account  given  in  the  Buckingham  Memoirs: 
"  Mr.  Pitt  asserted  that  the  right  of  providing  a  remedy  for  the  suspen- 
sion of  the  regular  powers  of  Government  rested  solely  with  the 
people.  .  .  .  The  language,  he  held,  upon  this  occasion  is  remarkable 
not  only  for  its  constitutional  soundness,  but  for  the  perspicuity  with 
which  it  states  the  actual  question  in  contest,  stripped  of  all  disguises 
and  evasions.  'To  assert  the  inherent  right  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  to 
assume  the  government  is  virtually  to  revive  those  exploded  ideas  of 
the  divine  and  indefeasible  authority  of  princes  which  have  so  justly 
sunk  into  contempt  and  almost  oblivion.  Kings  and  princes  derive 
their  power  from  the  people  ;  and  to  the  people  alone,  through  the 
organ  of  their  representatives,  does  it  appertain  to  decide  in  cases  for 
which  the  constitution  has  made  no  specific  or  positive  provision ' " 
(Memoirs  of  the  Court  and  Cabinets  of  George  the  Third,  by  the  Duke 
of  Buckingham  and  Chandos,  vol.  ii.  p.  39). 


I  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA  15 

that  have  been  in  the  ascendant  in  the  process  of 
political  development  throughout  the  world. 

It  is  the  conceptions  of  the  included  movement 
which  are  registered  in  the  constitutional  documents 
in  which 'the  people  of  the  United  States  have  ex- 
pressed their  political  convictions.  It  is  mainly  the 
theories  of  society  evolved  in  the  still  earlier  phase 
of  the  struggle  in  England  between  the  principle  of 
authority  and  the  popular  will  that  were  put  into 
circulation  in  France  by  Rousseau,  Voltaire,  Con- 
dorcet,  Diderot,  D'Alembert,  and  which  we  follow 
towards  our  own  time  through  the  subsequent  liter- 
ature of  the  French  Revolution.1  It  is  the  prestige 
of  the  theory  of  government  as  evolved  in  this  move- 
ment, and  principally  among  the  English-speaking 
peoples,  that  has  dominated  the  modern  development 
towards  democratic  institutions  throughout  the  world. 
All  the  principal  landmarks  in  modern  thought,  from 
Hobbes  onward,  including  Kant's  Critique  and  the 
Darwinian  hypothesis  itself,  have  direct  relations  to 
fundamental  intellectual  conceptions  of  this  move- 
ment.2 In  whatever  light  we  regard  it,  we  are  bound 
to  consider  the  movement,  as  a  whole,  as  the  channel 

1  Cf.  Natural  Rights,  by  David  G.  Ritchie,  chap.  i. 

2  Kant's  work  in  the  Critique  presented  itself  to  its  author  (cf. 
Kant's  Introduction  to  the  Prolegomena  to  any  Future  Metaphysic)  as 
a  criticism  of  Hume's  fundamental  position  that  the  content  of  the 
human  mind  is  related  to  experience.    This  is  the  position  which  has 
been  closely  associated  with  the  utilitarian  movement  in  England,  and 
which  has  since  received  its  most  characteristic  expression  in  English 
thought  in  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  philosophy.     The  principal  concep- 
tion upon  which  the  Darwinian  hypothesis  is  based  took  shape  in 
Darwin's  mind  after  reading  Malthus's  Theory  of  Population,  one  of 
the  most  characteristic  productions  of  the  English  Utilitarians  (cf.  Life 
and  Letters  of  Darwin,  by  his  son,  F.  Darwin,  vol.  i.). 


1 6  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

through  which,  in  modern  times,  the  main  stream 
of  the  evolutionary  process  has  come  down  through 
Western  history.  The  system  of  ideas  associated 
with  it,  is  that  under  which  the  most  important  de- 
velopment in  modern  history  has  taken  place  —  the 
process  of  expansion  in  which  a  few  millions  of  the 
least  significant  of  Western  peoples  have,  within  two 
centuries,  become  a  fourth  of  the  white  population 
of  the  world,  and  under  which  some  five-twelfths  of 
the  human  race  have  passed  under  the  direct  influ- 
ence of  their  government,  laws,  and  institutions.1 

If,  however,  at  the  opening  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, we  look  in  England  at  the  party  which  has 

1  The  total  population  of  the  United  States  and  Dependencies,  and 
of  the  British  Empire  with  Dependencies  and  Protectorates,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  was  522  millions.  Speaking  of 
the  position  of  the  white  races  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century  Sir  R.  Giffen  says :  "  The  population  of  Europe  and  of  nations 
of  European  origin,  like  the  United  States,  might  now  be  put  at  some- 
thing over  500  millions.  The  United  States  themselves  might  be  put 
at  nearly  80  millions  ;  Russia  in  its  recent  census  showed  a  population 
which  must  already  have  grown  to  about  135  millions;  Germany  about 
55  millions;  the  United  Kingdom,  with  the  self-governing  colonies  of 
Canada  and  Australasia  and  the  white  population  of  South  Africa, 
55  millions  ;  Austria-Hungary,  45  millions  ;  France,  40  millions  ; 
Italy,  32  millions ;  Spain  and  Portugal,  25  millions  ;  Scandinavian 
countries,  10  millions  ;  Holland  and  Belgium,  10  millions  ;  and  other 
European  countries,  20  millions.  A  century  ago  the  corresponding 
figure  to  this  500  millions  would  not  have  been  more  than  about  1 70 
millions.  .  .  .  The  development  was  for  the  most  part  not  uniform 
among  the  European  populations.  It  was  most  marked  in  the  Anglo- 
American  section.  The  increase  here  was  from  a  population  of  not 
more  than  about  20  millions,  which  was  the  population  of  the  United 
States  and  the  United  Kingdom  together  a  hundred  years  ago,  to  a 
population  of  not  less  than  130  millions  at  the  present  time.  Russia 
and  Germany  also  showed  remarkable  increases,  but  nothing  like  this  " 
(Address  to  the  Manchester  Statistical  Society,  October,  1900). 


I  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA  IJ 

behind  it  the  tradition  of  such  an  imposing  process 
of  progress,  the  spectacle  is  one  of  peculiar  interest. 
The  great  utilitarian  movement  of  the  nineteenth 
century  has  run  its  course,  having  brought  under 
the  domination  of  its  principles  almost  all  the  lead- 
ing tendencies  of  political  and  economic  develop- 
ment in  England  and  the  United  States.  But  the 
signs  on  all  hands  are  apparent  which  mark  how 
profoundly  the  dim  prescience  of  the  significance  of 
the  position  which  has  been  reached  in  Western 
thought  has  begun  to  affect  the  party  which  has 
thus  so  directly  represented  in  the  past  the  causes 
that  are  carrying  the  modern  world  forward. 

To  the  more  thinking  mind  the  nature  of  the  revo- 
lution which  has  been  effected  has  already  begun  to 
be  apparent.  "The  basis  of  the  old  radicalism  has 
gone,"  says  one  of  the  most  radical  of  recent  political 
writers  in  England.1  The  one  idea,  it  is  pointed  out, 
which  had  become  common  to  all  the  groups  of  Eng- 
lish, Continental,  and  American  Radicals  in  the  past, 
was  the  organisation  of  society  towards  the  gratifica- 
tion of  the  desires,  and  the  furtherance  of  the  inter- 
ests, of  the  existing  individuals  in  political  societies. 
It  was  this  conception  that  the  old  radicalism  held 
always  in  the  foreground.  It  was,  therefore,  towards 
the  ideal  of  finality  in  political  institutions,  and  of  a 
fixed  social  order  in  which  all  problems  would  be 
solved  and  the  conciliation  of  all  interests  effected, 
that  its  purposes  moved.2  But  all  this,  it  is  per- 
ceived, has  been  changed.  An  absolutely  new  Avorlcl 
of  ideas  has  been  born  beneath  it.  In  the  words  of 

1  William  Clarke,  Political  Science  Quarterly,  vol.  xiv. 

2  Ibid. 

c 


1 8  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  writer  in  question  :  "  The  radical  notion  of  polit- 
ical finality  has  been  doomed.  Since  radicalism  was 
first  preached  as  a  creed  in  England,  all  political 
as  well  as  all  scientific  thinking  has  been  vitally 
affected  by  the  conception  of  evolution."  1 

As  we  regard  the  situation  developing  itself  under 
our  eyes  we  may  distinguish  how  deep  beneath  the 
surface  of  events  the  principles  to  which  its  meaning 
is  related  in  reality  extend.  They  are  principles  which 
cannot  be  expressed  in  any  theory  of  temporary  or 
local  causes.  "There  is  no  more  patent  and  signifi- 
cant fact  in  contemporary  Europe,"  says  the  same 
writer  elsewhere,  "than  the  failure,  if  not  the  abso- 
lute collapse,  of  parliamentary  government.  In  France 
and  Italy  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  is  half-dreaded, 
half-despised.  In  Austria,  fortunately,  the  Reichs- 
rath  does  not  govern."2  In  England,  the  accom- 
paniment of  the  conditions  already  described  has 
been  "  a  visible  decline  in  the  esteem  in  which  Par- 
liament is  held,  and  of  the  genuine  authority  which 
it  possesses."3  In  Germany  the  Liberalism  of  the 
middle  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  ended 
in  disillusionment,  tending,  amongst  the  parties  that 
have  succeeded  those  which  professed  it,  towards  a 
condition  of  avowed  materialism  in  life  and  thoifght. 

Now  when  the  mind  is  carried  back  over  the  his- 
tory of  the  past,  it  may  be  perceived  that  there  is 
a  noteworthy  fact  to  which  the  movement  which  has 
hitherto  represented  the  cause  of  progress  through- 
out the  English-speaking  world  has  been  primarily 

1  Political  Science  Quarterly,  vol.  xiv. 

2  "  Bismarck,"  Contemporary  Review,  No.  397. 
8  Ibid. 


i  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA  19 

related.  That  movement,  as  it  began  its  course  both 
in  England  and  America,  rested  ultimately  on  a  broad 
basis,  which  was  the  same  in  both  countries,  namely, 
the  existence  of  a  deep  moral  enthusiasm  for  certain 
principles  which  had  in  the  last  resort  a  very  definite 
meaning  for  their  adherents.  They  were  the  prin- 
ciples to  which  it  was  firmly  believed  the  inner  and 
higher  meaning  of  our  civilisation  was  vitally  related. 
They  were  principles  which  were  held,  accordingly, 
to  make  one  characteristic  demand  upon  their  adher- 
ents. All  interests,  local,  personal,  and  institutional 

—  including  those  of  the  State  itself   as  conceived 
within  the  furthest  limits  of  political  consciousness 

—  were  held  ultimately  to  go  down  before  the  claim 
which  they  made  on  the  minds  of  men.     The  move- 
ment towards  individualism,  towards  personal  respon- 
sibility, towards  the  enfranchisement  of  the  individual 
in  all  his  rights,  powers,  capacities,  and  opportunities, 
was  closely  related  to  this  fundamental  principle  with 
which  modern   Liberalism  set  out  in   England  and 
America  alike.     It  has  been,  beyond  doubt,  the  con- 
sciousness, never  expressed  in  formulas,  but  always 
present  in  the  background,  of  the  relationship  of  the 
individual  to  larger  claims  on  him  than  any  included 
within  the  purposes  of  the  State,  which  has  dominated 
the  strenuous  inner  life  of  that  process  of  political 
enfranchisement  with  which  the  genius  of  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking peoples  has  been  identified  during  the 
modern  period  in  history. 

As,  however,  we  watch  the  great  movement  of 
modern  progress  approaching  our  time,  and  follow 
the  gradual  development  of  the  theory  of  society 
which  accompanies  it,  we  become  conscious  that  we 


2O  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

have  in  sight  a  phenomenon  of  altogether  exceptional 
interest  in  the  history  of  thought.  We  observe  this 
characteristic  principle  in  Western  Liberalism,  the 
ultimate  effect  of  which  was  to  project  the  control- 
ling meaning  of  the  evolutionary  process  beyond  the 
control  of  all  mere  theories  of  the  State,  gradually 
sinking  out  of  sight ;  until  in  the  form  in  which  the 
theory  of  social  progress  reaches  us  at  last  it  has 
practically  disappeared  beneath  the  surface  of  modern 
thought.  It  is  the  theory  of  the  State  alone  which 
remains  in  view.  The  prevailing  conception  of 
modern  progress  has  become,  that  is  to  say,  no  more 
than  a  conception  of  the  adjustment  of  forces  within 
the  State  —  a  mere  theory,  therefore,  of  the  organisa- 
tion of  interests  included  within  the  limits  of  political 
consciousness.  That  characteristic  principle  which, 
as  we  now  begin  to  dimly  understand,  must  divide 
by  a  clear  line  of  demarcation  the  meaning  of  our 
civilisation  from  that  of  the  ancient  world  has  disap- 
peared. In  the  current  theories  of  our  social  develop- 
ment it  is  as  if  we  had  been  carried  back  twenty-three 
centuries  of  history,  and  occupied  once  more  the 
standpoint  of  the  world  in  the  Politics  of  Aristotle. 
As  we  look  now  at  the  problem  which  we  see  tak- 
ing shape  in  our  civilisation,  the  extraordinary  char- 
acter of  its  outlines  begins  to  slowly  reveal  itself  to 
view.  In  the  light  of  the  modern  theory  of  evolution 
the  ruling  meaning  which  expressed  itself  through  all 
the  forms  of  the  ancient  civilisations  is  becoming 
clear.  In  these  civilisations,  in  which  the  purposes 
of  the  State  included  the  whole  life  and  interests  of 
the  individual  —  material,  moral,  and  religious  —  the 
ultimate  fact  to  which  all  others  stood  related  was 


I  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA  21 

the  ascendency  of  the  present  in  the  evolutionary 
process.  It  was  the  rule  of  the  present,  and  the 
ascendency  of  all  the  powers,  forces,  institutions,  and 
interests  able  to  dominate  it,  which  constituted  the 
characteristic  fact  to  which  the  meaning  of  all  other 
facts  was  related  in  this  phase  of  the  world's  history. 
The  significance  of  our  civilisation,  on  the  other 
hand,  as  expressed  through  the  modern  movement  of 
enfranchisement,  has  been,  as  we  are  now  beginning 
to  understand,  to  break  this  hitherto  universal  ascen- 
dency of  the  present.  And  the  process  of  social 
evolution  in  which  this  end  is  being  accomplished  is 
one  in  which  all  human  activities  —  in  economics,  poli- 
tics, ethics,  and  religion  —  are  being  drawn  into  the 
sweep  of  an  integrating  process,  the  controlling  mean- 
ing of  which  tends  to  be  projected  beyond  the  content 
of  all  theories  of  the  interests  of  society  as  included 
within  the  limits  of  the  consciousness  of  the  State. 

What,  therefore,  is  the  significance  of  the  remark- 
able position  in  modern  politics  wherein  we  see  the 
forward  movement  in  our  time  so  deeply  committed 
to  a  theory  of  progress  in  which  it  is  this  conception 
of  the  ascendency  of  the  present  that  is  again  every- 
where in  evidence  ?  It  is  when,  for  answer,  we  turn 
now  to  the  inner  life  of  the  party  with  which  the  cause 
of  progress  is  identified  that  we  realise  to  the  full  the 
nature  of  the  situation  with  which  Western  Liberalism 
is  beginning  to  find  itself  confronted  in  our  civilisation. 

The  leading  fact  in  Western  history,  which  has 
accompanied  the  development  of  the  intellectual 
theory  of  society  here  described,  has  been  the  pass- 
ing of  the  political  and  economic  life  of  the  English- 
speaking  peoples,  under  the  dominance  of  the  ideas 


22  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

of  that  school  of  political  and  economic  theory  which 
has  come  to  be  generally  known  in  our  time  as  the 
Manchester  school.  Although  many  of  the  theories 
with  which  this  school  of  thought  accompanied  its 
teaching,  and  in  particular  the  doctrine  of  inter- 
national trade  with  which  its  name  became  associated 
in  England,  have  failed  to  obtain  general  acceptance 
outside  of  Great  Britain,  the  significance  of  the 
school  is  not  to  be  judged  from  this  fact.  It  is  the 
general  spirit  of  the  ideas  from  which  its  funda- 
mental premises  were  developed  that  has  become  the 
dominant  influence  in  the  modern  epoch  of  commer- 
cialism throughout  our  civilisation. 

The  central  and  most  characteristic  conception  of 
the  Manchester  school,  to  which  all  others  were 
related,  may  be  briefly  stated.  It  was  the  principle 
of  laissez-faire  competition  as  applied  consistently 
through  the  phases  of  the  economic  process  in 
society ;  first  of  all  to  the  relations  of  capital  to 
labour,  then  to  the  relations  to  each  other  of  com- 
peting industries  and  undertakings  within  the  State, 
and  finally  —  in  the  form  in  which  the  conception 
was  accepted  in  England  —  to  the  processes  of  inter- 
national trade  throughout  the  world.  In  the  ideal 
condition  of  social  order  which  was  contemplated, 
the  members  of  society  were  conceived  as  released 
in  the  State  into  a  kind  of  free  and  uncontrolled 
struggle  in  pursuit  of  individual  gain.  In  the  state 
of  unrestricted  competition,  contemplated  by  expo- 
nents of  the  school  in  England,  the  conditions  in 
wages,  rewards,  prices,  standards,  and  results  were 
conceived  as  slowly  moving  towards  a  phase  of  ulti- 
mate economic  equalisation  throughout  the  world. 


- 


I  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN   ERA  23 

Here  we  have!  in  view  the  perfectly  clear  and 
consistent  theory  of  social  order  as  it  was  presented 
by  the  Manchester  school.  Its  characteristic  prin- 
ciple remains,  however,  to  be  emphasised.  As  the 
advocates  of  this  theory  of  social  order  held  that, 
in  the  state  of  uncontrolled  and  unrestricted  com- 
petition which  it  contemplated,  the  tendency  of  all 
economic  evils  would  be  to  cure  themselves,  a 
further  assumption  followed.  All  sense  of  responsi- 
bility —  personal,  social,  or  collective  —  was  therefore 
regarded  as  divorced  from  the  incidents  and  results 
of  the  competitive  process.  The  leading  conception 
of  the  school  was,  in  short,  that  of  non-interference 
with  men  in  their  pursuit  of  gain  throughout  the 
world.  And  the  ultimate  conception  of  the  State  was 
that  of  an  irresistible  power  in  the  background  organ- 
ised primarily  towards  providing  strict  guarantees  to 
men  for  the  possession  of  what  they  had  secured.1 

1  It  has  been  pointed  out  of  England,  by  the  writer  quoted,  that, 
although  "  when  we  speak  to-day  of  the  old  Radicalism  we  almost  at 
once  think  of  Manchesterism,"  the  ideas  of  the  modern  Liberal  move- 
ment in  England  did  not  at  the  outset  necessarily  imply  such  a  con- 
ception of  organised  public  life  as  here  indicated.  There  has  been  a 
retrogression.  The  conditions  under  which  the  remarkable  transition 
which  has  taken  place  in  England  was  accomplished  are  considered 
to  be  associated  with  two  causes  :  The  transition  "  was  due,  in  the 
first  place,  to  the  isolation  of  the  economic  factor  from  all  the  other 
varied  factors  of  political  life,  and  the  making  of  that  one  factor  the 
expression  of  all  public  purpose.  In  the  second  place,  it  was  appar- 
ently largely  due  to  the  action  of  that  section  of  the  Chartists  who, 
under  the  lead  of  Feargus  O'Connor,  resolutely  and  vehemently  cut 
adrift  from  the  middle-class  Radicals,  leaving  the  latter  immersed  in 
business,  without  the  helping  hand  of  labour,  absorbed  (as  it  was 
inevitable  they  should  be)  in  the  problem  of  material  production,  and 
with  no  fruitful  view  of  the  position  and  functions  of  the  state  " 
(Political  Science  Quarterly,  vol.  xiv.  pp.  82,  83). 


24  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  intention  with  which 
the  Manchester  school  set  out ;  whatever  may  have 
been  the  desires  of  its  individual  members ;  or  the 
conviction  of  its  individual  exponents  to  the  effect 
that  economic  evils  left  alone  would  cure  themselves ; 
whatever  may  even  be  the  eventual  justification  of 
its  theories  as  those  of  a  necessary  condition  of  society 
intervening  between  two  epochs  of  the  world's  de- 
velopment ;  there  can  apparently  be  no  longer  any 
doubt  as  to  the  essential  meaning  of  the  phase  of 
social  development  which  Manchesterism  represents. 
As  the  evolutionist  watches  the  world-process  slowly 
falling  throughout  our  civilisation  to  the  level  of  its 
ruling  factor;  as  he  sees  it  gradually,  but  inevitably 
in  the  conditions  described,  eliminating  from  eco- 
nomic competition  in  its  various  phases  all  qualities 
and  conditions  but  those  contributing  to  success  and 
survival  therein  —  the  impression  produced  on  the 
mind  becomes  definite.  The  largeness  of  the  stage 
upon  which  the  world-drama  is  being  enacted  obscures 
for  a  time  the  controlling  meaning.  But  the  distinc- 
tive character  of  the  process  as  a  whole  begins  at  last 
to  be  manifest.  The  principles  of  the  Manchester 
school  have,  he  sees,  one  meaning  which  ultimately 
overlies  and  over-reaches  all  others.  They  are  the 
characteristic  vehicle  through  which  the  present  has 
endeavoured  to  express  its  ascendency  in  the  modern 
political  drama  in  our  civilisation.  They  are  the  prin- 
ciples which  correspond  to  the  position  in  thought 
that  has  just  been  described.  In  the  future  history 
of  social  development  it  is  with  the  era  of  the  ascen- 
dency of  the  present  in  the  economic  activities  of  the 
world  that  the  distinctive  meaning  of  the  Manchester 


I  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA  25 

school  is  destined  to  be  identified.  It  is  as  if  the 
conditions  of  the  irresponsible  struggle  to  the  death 
between  men  in  the  ancient  civilisations  had  been 
changed  from  a  military  to  an  economic  basis,  while 
as  yet  every  one  of  its  other  ruling  principles  had 
remained  unaltered.1 

As  in  this  light  we  look  at  the  applied  results  of 
this  conception  of  society  as  they  have  been  developed 
in  our  civilisation  down  into  the  period  in  which  we 
are  living,  the  relationship  to  each  other  of  the  leading 
phases  of  the  economic  process  may  be  distinguished. 

In  the  long  characteristic  struggle  maintained 
throughout  our  civilisation  in  the  modern  period  by 
labour  against  the  terms  of  capital,  all  the  details  are, 
we  begin  to  see,  related  to  the  fact  which  is  here 
emphasised.  Whatever  the  accompaniments  of  this 
struggle,  or  whatever  the  passing  rights  or  wrongs  on 
either  side,  it  is  now  beginning  to  be  clear  that  the 
one  fact  which  weights  its  meaning  is  that  it  is  pri- 
marily a  conflict  in  which  society  is  confronted  with 
the  ascendency  of  the  present  in  the  economic  pro- 

1  In  an  interesting  analysis,  Dr.  Cunningham  brings  out  the  fact  that, 
despite  the  larger  humanitarian  and  cosmopolitan  conceptions  often 
associated  with  the  application  of  the  modern  theories  of  trade,  there 
was  really  nothing  cosmopolitan  in  the  views  with  which  the  Manches- 
ter school  set  out  in  England.  In  their  principles  they  "set  wealth  in 
the  foreground  and  ignored  national  power  as  an  independent  aim." 
But  both  in  internal  and  external  relations  the  ruling  principle  was 
related  to  the  pursuit  of  wealth.  For,  "  it  was  reasonable  to  maintain 
that  each  individual  knew  his  own  interest  best,  that,  in  pursuing  his 
own  interest,  he  accumulated  most  wealth  for  himself,  and  that,  in  so 
far  as  each  individual  acted  in  this  fashiun,  the  aggregate  wealth  of  all 
individuals  and  the  total  wealth  of  the  nation  would  increase"  {The 
Grcnuth  of  English  Industry  and  Commerce  in  Afodern  Times,  by  \V. 
Cunningham,  pp.  584-585). 


26  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

cess.  It  is  a  struggle  in  which  we  see  labour  setting 
out  in  the  modern  period  able,  even  in  its  collective 
expression,  to  wield  only  the  weapon  of  the  right  to 
reduce  profits,  against  the  power  of  capital  to  refuse 
the  right  to  live.  It  has  been  a  struggle,  therefore, 
in  which  society  has  found  itself  oppressed  with  the 
barbarous  and  disorganising  methods  of  strikes  and 
lock-outs  on  a  growing  scale ;  in  which,  even  where 
labour  has  succeeded,  it  has  often  been  successful 
only  in  conditions  in  which  neither  its  own  higher 
interests  nor  those  of  society  are  tending  to  be  ulti- 
mately realised ;  and  in  which,  as  through  the  long 
process  of  modern  labour-legislation  the  primary  con- 
ceptions of  the  Manchester  school  have  become 
challenged  by  an  increasing  social  instinct,  the  out- 
lines of  an  immensely  larger  problem  behind,  towards 
which  we  are  moving,  have  slowly  become  visible. 

In  the  wider  phases  of  the  industrial  process  it  is 
the  same  fact  of  the  ascendency  of  the  present  with 
which  society  is  becoming  more  and  more  consciously 
envisaged.  As  under  the  ruling  spirit  of  the  concep- 
tions of  the  Manchester  school,  unrestricted  compe- 
tition in  industry  has  tended  to  become  essentially 
a  free  struggle  for  gain,  divorced  from  all  sense  of 
responsibility,  we  see  how  the  process  has,  by  inher- 
ent necessity,  tended  to  eliminate  from  it  all  qualities 
and  principles  save  those  contributing  to  success  and 
survival  in  a  conflict  waged  under  such  conditions. 
The  resulting  tendency  of  industry  and  commerce  to 
pass  gradually  under  the  control  of  aggregations  of 
capital  effectively  organised  for  conflict,  while  the 
outstanding  rivals  gravitate  towards  the  phenomenon 
of  monopoly  control  on  a  gigantic  scale  ;  the  growth 


I  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA  2/ 

of  wealth  and  power  in  such  organisations  until  they 
have  become  rivals  in  some  respects  of  the  State 
itself;  the  exercise  of  such  unusual  and  immense 
powers,  with  no  sense  of  responsibility  other  than  that 
of  the  self-interest  of  capital  in  pursuit  of  gain ;  the 
earning  of  profits  which,  when  all  allowance  is  made 
for  benefits  rendered  in  the  organisation  of  industry, 
tend  more  and  more  to  correspond  to  conditions  of 
monopoly  and  less  and  less  to  equivalent  in  terms  of 
social  service  ;  with,  incidentally,  the  accumulation  in 
individual  hands  of  private  fortunes  tending  to  equal 
in  capital  amount  the  annual  revenue  of  first-class 
States :  are  all  features  of  a  state  of  society  in  which, 
under  the  characteristic  economic  activities  of  the 
modern  world,  we  see  the  ruling  conditions  of  the 
ancient  civilisations  again  being  reproduced.  They 
are  all  expressions  of  a  single  fact,  namely,  that  as- 
cendency of  the  present  in  the  economic  process, 
which  is  the  correlative  of  the  position  in  thought 
already  described,  but  which,  nevertheless,  cannot  be, 
as  would  appear,  the  condition  towards  which  human 
society  is  developing. 

As  such  a  phase  of  social  development  moves  slowly 
in  our  time  toward  its  highest  expression  on  the  world- 
stage,  it  is  the  lurid  and  gigantic  details  of  the  same 
principle  that  continue  to  hold  the  mind.  As  in  the 
international  exploitation  of  the  resources  of  the  world 
all  nations  have  tended  to  come  at  last  into  a  common 
market  to  compete  for  a  diminishing  margin  of  profit ; 
as,  therefore,  in  a  competition  for  gain  divorced  from 
the  sense  of  responsibility,  we  see  the  process  here 
also  falling  to  the  level  of  its  ruling  factor,  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  situations  in  history  has  gradually 


28  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

become  defined.  With  the  development  of  the  move- 
ment towards  the  equalisation  of  economic  conditions 
throughout  the  world  there  has  emerged  into  the 
view  of  the  leading  peoples  a  tendency,  inherent  in 
the  process  from  the  beginning,  compelling  capital  at 
an  ultimate  stage  of  the  process  to  close  with  the 
causes  opposing  it ;  and,  in  a  sustained  and  organised 
effort,  to  maintain  the  process  of  exploitation  in  trade 
and  industry  in  the  world  at  the  level  of  its  lowest 
standards  in  human  life  and  labour,  that  is  to  say, 
at  the  standards  of  the  less  developed  races  of  man- 
kind. 

This  is  the  phase  of  the  problem  which  has  already 
begun  to  dimly  haunt  the  consciousness  of  labour  in 
our  civilisation,  and  which,  in  a  hundred  complex 
forms,  already  makes  itself  felt  in  the  international 
relations  of  our  time.  Yet  it  was  the  spectacle 
which  the  late  Charles  H.  Pearson,  in  the  last  decade 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  calmly  contemplated  as 
likely  to  be  realised  at  no  distant  time,  and  as  the 
natural  and  apparently  legitimate  culmination  in 
practice  of  the  theories  of  the  Manchester  school. 
The  day  was  probably  not  far  distant,  he  assured  us, 
when  we  should  see  the  races  of  our  Western  civilisa- 
tion elbowed  and  hustled,  and  in  large  measure  super- 
seded, by  the  yellow  races  of  the  world,  through  the 
destiny  of  capital  to  find  in  these  latter  its  most 
effective  instruments  when  it  proceeded  in  due  course, 
and  in  obedience  to  its  inherent  tendencies,  to  wage 
the  economic  conflict  throughout  the  world  under  the 
lowest  possible  standards  of  human  life  and  human 
labour.1 

1  National  Life  and  Character,  chaps,  i.-iii. 


i  THE  CLOSE  OF  AN  ERA  29 

The  profound  materialism  of  this  final  conception, 
which  —  blind  to  the  significance  of  the  principle 
which  our  civilisation  represents,  and  blind,  therefore, 
to  the  meaning  of  the  causes  for  which  that  civilisa- 
tion has  wrought  and  suffered  for  a  thousand  years  — 
contemplated  the  lower  sections  of  the  race  extinguish- 
ing the  higher,  simply  by  reason  of  their  ability  to 
wage  an  economic  struggle  on  more  purely  animal 
conditions,  could  hardly  be  carried  farther.  In  it  we 
see  the  conception  of  the  ascendency  of  the  present  in 
the  modern  economic  process  which  led  James  Mill 
in  the  early  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century  to 
assert  that  there  was  no  place  in  the  theory  of  society 
for  a  moral  sense,  as  it  was  not  required  to  discern 
"  Utility," 1  carried,  as  it  were,  to  its  final  expression 
in  the  world  process. 

This  is  the  position  in  Western  thought  with  which 
an  era  closes.2  In  the  current  literature  of  the  social 
revolt  throughout  our  civilisation,  we  only  see,  as  it 
were,  the  theories  of  the  middle  decades  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  carried  to  their  logical  application.  It 
is,  in  reality,  the  governing  idea  of  Bentham,  the  Mills, 

JMr.  Leslie  Stephen,  speaking  of  this  polemic  of  James  Mill 
against  the  moral  sense  theory  in  the  dispute  with  Mackintosh,  says 
justly,  that  it  "  reveals  the  really  critical  points  of  the  true  utilitarian 
doctrine.  Mill  would  cut  down  the  moral  sense  root  and  branch.  The 
'moral  sense'  means  a  'particular  faculty' necessary  to  discern  right 
and  wrong.  But  no  particular  faculty  is  necessary  to  discern  '  utility.' 
.  .  .  The  utility  is  not  the  '  criterion  '  of  the  morality,  but  itself  consti- 
tutes the  morality  "  (  The  English  Utilitarians,  by  Leslie  Stephen,  vol. 
ii.p.  321). 

2  In  it  we  see  how,  to  use  John  Morley's  words,  "great  economic 
and  social  forces  flow  with  a  tidal  sweep  over  communities  that  are 
only  half-conscious  of  that  which  is  befalling  them  "  (The  Life  of  Rich- 
ard Cob  Jen,  vol.  ii.  chap.  xx.). 


30  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP.  I 

and  the  group  of  writers  who  developed  the  theories  of 
the  Manchester  school  in  England  that  we  encounter 
again  in  Loria's  conception,  as  applied  to  modern 
Italy,  of  the  dominance  of  the  economic  factor  in 
society  ; l  in  Marx's  conception,  as  applied  to  our  civ- 
ilisation at  large,  of  the  materialistic  interpretation  of 
history ;  in  Nietzsche's  conception,  as  applied  to  the 
occupying  classes  in  modern  Germany,  of  the  super- 
lative claims  of  the  Uebermenschen.2  The  point  of 
view  may  be  altered  according  to  the  nature  of  the 
interest  concerned  ;  but  the  essential  conception  is 
the  same  in  all  cases  —  the  ascendency  of  the  present 
in  the  economic  process  in  history. 

The  relation  to  each  other  of  all  the  phases  of 
thought  and  action  here  discussed  will  be  evident. 
They  are  all  but  the  closely  related  aspects  of  the 
influence  on  the  human  mind  of  a  single  conception, 
the  meaning  of  which  may  be  said  to  have  dominated 
the  theory  of  our  social  progress  through  the  demo- 
cratic development  of  the  nineteenth  century,  namely, 
that  the  controlling  centre  of  the  evolutionary  process 
in  the  drama  of  human  progress  is  in  the  present,  and 
that  the  ascendency  of  the  interests  of  the  present  is 
the  end  toward  which  the  whole  order  of  our  social 
and  political  development  moves.  This  is  the  con- 
ception from  which  the  intellectual  foundations  have 
been  removed. 

1  Les  bases  economiques  de  la  constitution  sociale,  — BOUCHARD. 

2  The  Twilight  of  the  Idols,  and  Zarathustra. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   SHIFTING    OF    THE    CENTRE    OF    SIGNIFICANCE    IN 

THE    EVOLUTIONARY    HYPOTHESIS THE    PRINCIPLE 

OF    PROJECTED    EFFICIENCY 

To  obtain  some  definite  view  of  the  nature  of  the 
remarkable  position  towards  which  the  theory  of  our 
Western  progress  has  been  carried  by  recent  devel- 
opments in  the  evolutionary  hypothesis,  it  is  in  the 
highest  degree  desirable  that  the  observer  should,  in 
the  first  instance,  endeavour,  as  far  as  possible,  to 
detach  his  point  of  view  from  those  more  current  and 
transient  phases  of  social  controversy  which  largely 
occupy  the  attention  of  the  world. 

The  first  step  towards  realising  the  condition  of 
mind  in  which  it  is  desirable  to  approach  the  consid- 
eration of  the  problem  of  modern  progress  through 
the  medium  of  the  biological  sciences  is  that  which 
every  really  scientific  observer  who  ha^followed  the 
trend  of  recent  thought  will  in  all  probability  have 
taken  for  himself.  There  is  possibly  no  one  at  the 
present  time,  who  has  made  progress  towards  under- 
standing something  of  the  governing  principles  of 
our  social  development,  that  has  not  arrived  at  a 
point  where  he  has  felt  the  necessity  for  definitely 
and  finally  putting  away  from  him  a  conception 
which  pervaded  almost  all  departments  of  social  phi- 
losophy in  the  past ;  namely,  the  conception  that 

31 


32  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

there  can  be  such  a  thing  as  a  true  science  of 
human  life  and  progress  apart  by  itself.  There  can- 
not be,  we  must  understand,  such  a  science  regarded 
as  an  isolated  section  of  knowledge ;  or  in  any  other 
sense  than  as  a  department  of  higher  biology.  All 
that  vast  and  complex  series  of  phenomena,  which  we 
have  in  the  history  of  our  social  progress,  constitute, 
it  would  appear,  only  the  last  and  highest  phase  in 
the  history  of  life,  the  latest  orderly  events  in  a  chain 
of  law  and  sequence  stretching  back  to  the  beginning 
of  sentient  existence.  There  has  been  only  one  pro- 
cess of  development  throughout :  there  is  only  one 
system  of  law  therein.  Every  phase  of  the  social 
life  around  us,  political,  economic,  and  ethical,1  how- 
ever self-centred  and  self-contained  it  may  appear 
to  the  beholders  themselves,  occupies,  and  will  ap- 
parently for  ever  occupy,  strictly  controlled  and  sub- 
ordinate relationship  to  this  central  process  of 
development.  We  must,  in  short,  put  away  from 
us,  once  and  for  all,  the  idea  that  we  can  understand 
any  part  of  this  process  as  an  isolated  study.  Its  last 
human  details  —  those  with  which  the  social  sciences 
are  concerned,  and  those  in  particular  which  carry  us 
down  into  th^  midst  of  Western  progress  —  can,  like 
all  those  which  have  preceded  them,  only  be  studied 
with  profit  by  science  when  we  understand  something 
of  the  nature  of  the  process  as  a  whole,  and  of  the 
laws  that  have  controlled  it  throughout. 

1  The  distinction  made  by  Huxley  (Oxford,  Romanes  Lecture,  1893) 
between  the  cosmic  process  and  the  ethical  process  is  entirely  superfi- 
cial. As  Huxley  afterwards  pointed  out  in  a  note  to  the  lecture,  it  must 
be  taken  that  the  social  life  and  the  ethical  process  in  virtue  of  which 
it  advances  towards  perfection  are  part  and  parcel  of  the  general  pro- 
cess of  evolution  (cf.  Evolution  and  Ethics,  note  20,  p.  114). 


II  PROJECTED   EFFICIENCY  33 

Now,  the  observer  who  has  noted  the  direction  in 
which  the  biological  sciences  have  been  affected  by 
recent  developments  in  the  evolutionary  hypothesis, 
and  who  has  perceived  the  relationship  of  the  conclu- 
sions which  have  been  reached,  to  theories  and  prin- 
ciples of  human  society  accepted  without  question  in 
the  past,  will  probably  find  that  there  is  a  conviction 
which  has  gradually  come  to  assume  shape  and  to 
attain  to  definitiveness  in  his  mind.  It  will  come  to 
be  seen  in  the  future,  he  perceives,  that  during  the 
last  few  decades  through  which  the  world  has  lived 
an  entirely  new  direction  has  been  given  to  the 
course  of  human  thought.  The  Darwinian  hypothe- 
sis, as  it  left  the  hands  of  Charles  Darwin,  remains 
in  all  its  main  features  unshaken.  It  has  survived, 
practically  without  serious  challenge,  the  criticisms 
to  which  it  has  been  subjected.  And  yet  it  has  been 
already  overlaid  by  a  meaning  which  carries  us 
almost  as  far  beyond  the  import  of  Darwin's  con- 
tribution to  knowledge  as  the  Darwinian  hypothesis 
itself  carried  us  beyond  the  more  elementary  evolu- 
tionary conceptions  of  Goethe  and  Lamarck. 

We  have,  it  would  appear,  passed  into  a  new  era 
of  knowledge  by  a  development  in  oui^conception  of 
the  process  of  biological  evolution,  which  will  almost 
certainly  be  seen,  when  viewed  from  the  horizon 
from  which  the  philosopher  and  historian  of  a  later 
period  will  regard  our  time,  to  dwarf  into  compara- 
tive insignificance  other  features  of  contemporary 
thought  upon  which  attention  has  been  concentrated 
to  a  far  greater  degree.  No  worker  in  any  depart- 
ment of  social  philosophy,  however  great  and  varied 
his  qualifications  in  other  respects,  can  any  longer  be 


34  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

said  to  be  fully  equipped  for  the  discussion  of  those 
problems  of  our  social  development  with  which  the 
world  is  struggling  until  he  has  perceived,  in  general 
effect  at  least,  the  bearing  of  the  change  which  has 
been  effected  on  the  process  of  our  social  evolution 
as  a  whole.  Let  us  see,  therefore,  if  we  can,  in  the 
first  place,  bring  into  view  the  nature  of  the  develop- 
ment which  has  taken  place  in  the  hypothesis  of 
biological  evolution  since  it  left  the  hands  of  Darwin. 

The  main  outlines  of  the  Darwinian  theory  of  the 
evolution  of  life  are,  in  our  own  time,  familiar  to 
nearly  all  informed  persons.  It  may  be  well,  how- 
ever, in  order  to  bring  more  clearly  before  the  mind 
their  relationship  to  the  subject  with  which  we  are 
about  to  deal,  to  briefly  pass  them  in  review. 

The  fundamental  conceptions  of  the  Darwinian 
theory  are  only  two  in  number.  We  have,  in  the 
first  place,  the  enormous  power  of  increase  with 
which  every  form  of  life,  from  the  lowest  to  the 
highest,  appears  to  be  endowed ;  so  that  its  numbers 
continually  tend  to  press  upon,  and  even  to  alto- 
gether outrun  the  means  of  comfortable  existence  for 
the  time  being.  "There  is  no  exception,"  says 
Darwin,  "to»the  rule  that  every  organic  being 
naturally  increases  at  so  high  a  rate  that,  if  not 
destroyed,  the  earth  would  soon  be  covered  by  the 
progeny  of  a  single  pair."  1  The  increase  of  life,  as 
Mr.  Alfred  Russel  Wallace  points  out,  is  always  in  a 
geometrical  ratio.  2  Linnaeus  has  calculated  that,  if  an 
annual  plant  produced  only  two  seeds  —  and  there 
is  no  plant  so  unproductive  as  this  —  and  their  seed- 
lings next  year  produced  two,  and  so  on,  then  in 

1  Origin  of  Species,  chap.  iii.  2  Darwinism,  p.  25. 


ii  PROJECTED   EFFICIENCY  35 

twenty  years  there  would  be  a  million  plants. * 
"Even  slow-breeding  man,"  says  Darwin,  "has 
doubled  in  twenty-five  years,  and,  at  this  rate,  in 
less  than  a  thousand  years  there  would  literally  not 
be  standing  room  for  his  progeny."  2  Of  every  form 
of  life  in  the  world  the  same  law  holds  good  :  its  rate 
of  increase  tends  to  overbalance  the  conditions  of  its 
life.3 

This  is  the  first  fundamental  principle  with  which 
we  are  concerned  in  the  Darwinian  hypothesis. 
The  second  principle  which  we  have  to  take  into 
account  is,  that  we  find  in  the  individuals  so  pro- 
duced a  tendency  to  variation  in  all  directions  within 
small  degrees,  with  the  capacity  for  the  transmission 
to  offspring  of  the  result.  This  individual  variability, 
as  Mr.  Wallace  has  taken  considerable  pains  to  show 
in  a  lengthy  examination  of  the  evidence,4  "is  a 
general  character  of  all  common  and  widespread 
species  of  animals  or  plants  "  ;  and,  further,  "  it  ex- 
tends, so  far  as  we  know,  to  every  part  and  organ, 
whether  external  or  internal,  as  well  as  to  every 
mental  faculty "  ;  and,  still  further,  "  each  part  or 
organ  varies  to  a  considerable  extent  independently 
of  other  parts."  5 

From  these  two  great  classes  of  facts,  now  gen- 

1  Exactly  1,048,576.  2  Origin  of  Species,  chap.  iii. 

8  The  elephant  is  reckoned  the  slowest  breeder  of  all  known 
animals.  Assuming  that  it  begins  breeding  when  thirty  years  old,  and 
goes  on  till  ninety  years  of  age,  bringing  forth  only  six  young  in  the 
interval,  and  surviving  till  one  hundred  years  old,  Darwin  reckoned 
that  in  a  period  of  some  750  years  there  would  be  living,  as  the 
descendants  of  a  single  pair,  nearly  nineteen  million  elephants  (Origin 
of  Species,  c.  iii.  p.  51). 

*  Darwinism,  c.  iii.  and  iv.  6  Ibid.  p.  8l. 


36  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

erally  accepted  without  question,  there  has  been 
deduced  the  distinctive  law  of  Natural  Selection, 
which,  in  the  words  of  Darwin,  consists  of  "the 
preservation  of  favoured  races  in  the  struggle  for 
life."  Despite  the  overwhelming  ratio  at  which  life 
is  produced  —  so  great,  as  we  have  seen,  that  even  in 
the  case  of  the  slowest  breeding  animals  it  has  only 
to  be  imagined  to  continue  to  any  appreciable  length 
of  time  to  see  that  the  numbers  would  exceed  all 
possible  conditions  of  existence  —  there  is,  under 
ordinary  circumstances,  no  perceptible  increase  in 
the  numbers  of  any  species.  The  balance  of  nature 
is  evenly  maintained  from  generation  to  generation 
through  prolonged  periods  of  time.  There  must  be, 
therefore,  at  some  point,  or  indeed  at  a  great  number 
of  points,  in  the  life  of  every  individual  a  tremendous 
struggle  for  a  place  in  the  categories  of  life.  Here 
we  have  what  appears  to  Darwin's  mind  to  be  the 
doctrine  of  Malthus  on  a  universal  scale.  For,  "  as 
many  more  individuals  of  each  species  are  born  than 
can  possibly  survive  ;  and  as,  consequently,  there  is  a 
frequently  recurring  struggle  for  existence,  it  follows 
that  any  being,  if  it  vary,  however  slightly,  in  any 
manner  profitable  to  itself,  under  the  complex  and 
sometimes  varying  conditions  of  life,  will  have  a 
better  chance  of  surviving,  and  thus  be  naturally 
selected.1  From  the  strong  principle  of  inheritance, 

1  The  close  connection  between  the  Darwinian  hypothesis  (of 
which  the  law  of  Natural  Selection  as  here  stated  is  the  essential 
part)  and  the  system  of  ideas  which  the  Manchester  school  repre- 
sented in  England  has  been  remarked  on.  The  law  of  Natural 
Selection,  in  the  terms  above  quoted,  was  suggested  to  Darwin  by 
reading  Malthus  on  Population,  and  in  the  text  of  the  Origin  of  Species 
he  describes  it  as  "  the  doctrine  of  Malthus  applied  to  the  whole  animal 


n  PROJECTED   EFFICIENCY  37 

any  selected  variety  will  tend  to  propagate  its  new 
and  modified  form."  1 

It  is,  in  short,  to  the  accumulation  through  infinite 
tracts  of  time  of  small  variations  useful  or  beneficial 
to  the  organism,  acquired  in  a  ceaseless  rivalry,  and  in 
an  environment  continually  changing,  that  we  owe  the 
extraordinarily  varied  and  complex  forms  of  life  in 
the  teeming  world  around  us  at  the  present  time.  As 
the  result  of  the  ceaseless  operation  of  such  a  cause, 
it  has  come  about,  as  Darwin  points  out,  that  "the 
structure  of  every  organic  being  is  related,  in  the 
most  essential  yet  often  hidden  manner,  to  that  of  all 
the  other  organic  beings  with  which  it  comes  into 
competition  for  food  or  residence,  or  from  which  it 
has  to  escape,  or  on  which  it  preys."2  It  may  be 
metaphorically  said,  he  continues  in  another  striking 
passage,  "that  Natural  Selection  is  daily  and  hourly 
scrutinising  throughout  the  world  the  slightest  varia- 
tions—  rejecting  those  that  are  bad,  preserving  and 
adding  up  all  that  are  good ;  silently  and  insensibly 
working,  whenever  and  wherever  opportunity  offers, 
at  the  improvement  of  each  organic  being  in  relation 
to  its  organic  and  inorganic  conditions  of  life.  We 
see  nothing  of  these  slow  changes  in  progress  until 
the  hand  of  time  has  marked  the  lapse  of  ages,  and 
then  so  imperfect  is  our  view  into  long-past  geological 
ages,  that  we  see  only  that  the  forms  of  life  are  now 
different  from  what  they  formerly  were."3 

and  vegetable  kingdoms  "  (p.  3).  It  will  be  of  some  interest  to  keep 
this  fact  in  view  in  endeavouring  to  present  to  the  mind  the  relationship 
between  the  political  conceptions  of  the  Manchester  school  of  thought 
and  the  development  which  has  since  taken  place  in  the  Darwinian 
hypothesis.  a  Ibid.  c.  iii. 

1  Origin  of  Species,  Introduction.  8  Ibid.  c.  iv. 


38  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

In  all  this  it  is  necessary  to  keep  clearly  in  view 
certain  governing  principles  to  which  all  others  are 
subordinate.  The  first  tendency  of  all  elementary 
criticism  is  to  find  in  life  itself  internal  causes  for 
development  or  divergence  along  certain  lines.  But 
we  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  tremendous  power 
and  universality  of  the  agencies  at  work.1  We  must 
never  forget  the  reach  of  the  ever  recurring  process 
of  selection  ;  that  the  increase  of  life  is  infinite ;  that 
only  the  few  are  selected  ;  and  that  the  selection  is 
determined  by  some  cause  in  every  case.2  In  all  the 
controversies  between  the  Darwinians  and  the  older 
naturalists,  who  saw  "laws  of  growth"  projecting 
themselves  in  all  directions  through  life,  the  con- 
sistent tendency  of  the  discussion  has  been  to  show 
how,  whether  such  laws  exist  or  not,  they  must  have 
coincided  with  the  fittest  in  every  other  respect,  or 
else  they  would  have  been  overruled  or  rendered 
nugatory.3  In  the  processes  of  life  extending  over 
vast  stretches  of  time,  we  must,  in  short,  consider 
the  law  to  have  been  always  the  same.  To  put  it  in 
Mr.  Wallace's  words  :  "  The  best  organised,  or  the 
most  healthy,  or  the  most  active,  or  the  best  pro- 
tected, or  the  most  intelligent,  will  inevitably,  in  the 
long  run,  gain  an  advantage  over  those  which  are 
inferior  in  these  qualities  —  that  is,  the  fittest  will 
survived  And  they  will  tend  to  transmit  to  their 
descendants  in  cumulative  degree  the  qualities  upon 
which  that  fitness  depended. 

1  Darwinism,  by  A.  R.  Wallace,  p.  122.  2  Ibid.  123. 

8  See  in  this  respect  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace's  striking  argument  as  to  the 
preponderance  of  Natural  Selection  over  sexual  preference  (Darwin- 
ism, c.  x.).  *  Darwinism,  p.  123. 


H  PROJECTED  EFFICIENCY  39 

This,  in  brief  recapitulation,  is  the  outline  of  the 
Darwinian  theory  of  biological  evolution,  as  it  has 
stood  the  test  of  attack  and  examination  from  in- 
numerable points  of  view  in  one  of  the  most  strenu- 
ous and  remarkable  intellectual  periods  in  history. 
Possibly  no  other  single  conception  of  the  human 
mind  has  produced  throughout  so  many  departments 
of  knowledge  results  at  once  so  profoundly  disinte- 
grating and  so  radically  reconstructive.  It  has,  to 
use  the  words  of  Romanes,  "  created  a  revolution  in 
the  thought  of  our  time,  the  magnitude  of  which, 
in  many  of  its  far-reaching  consequences,  we  are  not 
even  yet  in  a  position  to  appreciate,  but  the  action 
of  which  has  already  wrought  a  transformation  in 
general  philosophy  as  well  as  in  the  more  special  sci- 
ence of  biology  that  is  without  a  parallel  in  the  his- 
tory of  mankind." 1  Whatever  may  have  been  thought 
of  the  hypothesis  in  the  period  of  discussion  through 
which  it  has  survived,  there  are  probably  few  thought- 
ful minds  at  the  present  time  who,  having  once 
grasped  the  nature  of  the  evidence  by  which  it  is 
supported,  have  not  received  a  deep  and  lasting  im- 
pression of  its  relation  to  actualities,  and  of  the 
extraordinary  significance  of  the  tendencies  in  know- 
ledge which  it  has  set  in  motion  amongst  us.2 

1  Darwin  and  after  Darwin,  G.  J.  Romanes,  vol.  i.  p.  259. 

2  It  is  only  by  long  familiarity  with  the  processes  of  thought  which 
the  application  of  the  law  of  Natural  Selection  implies  that  the  intel- 
lectual reach  of  the  principle  is  fully  perceived.    It  was  not  an  unfitting 
tribute  which  Professor  Sayce  paid  to  the  conception  when,  speaking 
of  it  at  a  comparatively  early  stage  of  the  discussion,  he  placed  it 
among  the  class  of  abstract  ideas,  the  discoursing  of  which  constituted 
landmarks  in  the  development  of  the  world,  "To  have  won  for  the  race 
a  single  idea  like  that  of  Natural  Selection  is  a  higher  glory  than  the 


40  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

So  far  the  attempt  has  been  made  to  present  the 
Darwinian  hypothesis  as  nearly  as  possible  in  its 
original  form.  Let  us  see  now  if  we  can  bring  home 
to  the  mind  some  idea  of  the  character  of  the 
development  which  has  taken  place  in  the  conception 
since  it  left  Darwin's  hands. 

Any  one  who  has  kept  in  touch  with  the  work 
which  down  to  the  present  time  has  been  done,  in 
England,  Germany,  and  America,  in  slowly  organis- 
ing the  evidence  upon  which  the  evolutionary  view 
rests,  will  be  conscious  of  a  peculiar  extension  which 
has  been  taking  place  in  the  conception  of  the  law  of 
Natural  Selection.  Like  nearly  all  important  depar- 
tures, the  change  has  been  effected  gradually  and 
under  a  number  of  phases,  so  that  many  of  those  who 
are  well  acquainted  with  the  details  of  knowledge, 
which  under  one  or  more  heads  have  contributed 
to  it,  have  remained  unconscious  of  the  character 
and  significance  of  the  process  of  movement  as  a 
whole. 

At  the  present  day  any  close  student  of  the  Origin 
of  Species  can  hardly  rise  from  the  study  of  that 
book  without  having  left  on  his  mind  at  least  one 
clear  and  definite  impression.  He  will  in  all  prob- 
ability feel,  over  and  above  everything  else,  how 
steadily  and  consistently  Darwin  kept  before  him  the 
vision  of  the  keen,  long-drawn-out,  and  never-relaxed 
struggle  in  which  every  form  of  life  is  of  necessity 
engaged ;  and  the  conception  of  the  dominating  im- 
portance of  every  feature  and  quality  contributing  to 
success  and  survival  in  this  supreme  rivalry. 

conquests  of  a  Qesar  "  (  The  Science  of  Language,  by  A.  H.  Sayce,  vol.  L 
pp.  1 02,  103). 


II  PROJECTED   EFFICIENCY  4! 

Now,  keeping  this  in  mind,  there  is  a  point  of 
great  interest  which  it  is  of  importance  to  notice. 
It  will  be  observed,  if  we  follow  closely  the  argument 
developed  in  the  Origin  of  Species,  that  those  profit- 
able features  and  qualities  which  Darwin  had  before 
his  mind,  and  which  he  beheld  ever  accumulating 
in  various  directions  under  the  influence  of  natural 
selection,  possessed  one  invariable  characteristic. 
They  were  those  profitable  to  the  actually  existing 
individuals,  or  to  the  majority  of  their  kind  for  the 
time  being. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  under  this  head.  Darwin 
repeatedly  expresses  himself  in  the  Origin  of  Species 
in  terms  which  leave  us  in  no  obscurity  as  to  his 
meaning.  When  he  sets  out  at  the  beginning  of 
the  Origin  of  Species  with  a  statement  of  the  princi- 
ple of  Natural  Selection,  the  terms  used  are  worthy 
of  attention.  "  Any  being,"  he  says,  "  if  it  vary 
however  slightly  in  any  manner  profitable  to  itself, 
under  the  complex  and  sometimes  varying  conditions 
of  life,  will  have  a  better  chance  of  surviving,  and 
thus  be  naturally  selected."1  The  import  of  the 
words  here  put  in  italics  will  be  obvious  ;  and  in  all 
the  later  references  in  the  Origin  of  Species  to  the 
effects  of  the  law  of  Natural  Selection,  the  terms 
used  may  be  seen  to  be  always  limited  to  the  same 
meaning.  The  significance  of  this  fact,  in  the  rela- 
tion with  which  we  are  here  concerned  with  it,  is, 
that  to  Darwin,  when  speaking  of  the  operation  of 
the  principle  of  Natural  Selection,  the  centre  of  sig- 
nificance was  always  in  the  present  time.  It  is  the 
effects  on  the  existing  individuals,  or  at  most  on  their 

1  Origin  of  Species,  p.  3. 


42  WESTERN   CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

young,  that  we  see  he  has  always  in  mind.  The  pas- 
sages in  which  this  fact  is  brought  out  clearly  are 
numerous.  Natural  Selection,  we  are  told  in  chap. 
iv.,  "acts  exclusively  by  the  preservation  and  accu- 
mulation of  variations  wJiich  are  beneficial  under  the 
organic  and  inorganic  conditions  to  which  each  crea- 
ture is  exposed  at  all  periods  of  life."  J  Natural  Selec- 
tion, he  points  out  later,  "  only  takes  advantage  of 
such  variations  as  arise  and  are  beneficial  to  each 
creature  under  its  complex  relations  of  life."  2  And 
in  the  concluding  chapter  of  the  Origin  of  Species,  in 
which  the  progressive  character  of  the  theory  of  evo- 
lution he  has  expounded  is  emphasised,  the  fact  is 
again  insisted  on  that  the  object  throughout  has  been 
to  show  that  Natural  Selection  works  solely  by  and 
for  the  good  of  each  being? 

It  may  be  readily  distinguished  from  this,  and  a 
large  class  of  similar  evidence,  that  Darwin  regarded 
the  law  of  Natural  Selection,  as  it  operated  through- 
out life,  simply  in  its  relation  to  the  interests  of  the 
individuals  taking  part  in  the  struggle  for  existence 
as  it  went  on  at  any  particular  time.  The  meaning 
of  the  process  of  progress  and  development,  as  he 
conceived  it  in  life,  had  reference,  therefore,  solely 
to  the  interests  of  the  individuals  who  were  engaged 
in  maintaining  a  place  in  this  rivalry  for  the  time 
being.4  All  biological  development,  that  is  to  say, 

1  Origin  of  Species,  p.  97.  2  Ibid.  p.  98.  *  Ibid.  p.  428. 

4  The  process  of  evolution  was,  Darwin  considered,  a  process  of 
progress,  but  it  was  progress  regarded  by  him  strictly  in  the  light  of  the 
individual's  welfare  in,  or  relations  to,  existing  conditions.  "  It  leads 
to  the  improvement  of  each  creature  in  relation  to  its  organic  and 
inorganic  conditions  of  life"  (cf.  Origin  of  Species,  p.  103). 


n  PROJECTED  EFFICIENCY  43 

had  relation  to  the  qualities  necessary  to  securing  the 
individual's  own  place  or  that  of  its  young,  in  this 
contemporary  struggle  for  existence.  The  whole 
drama  of  progress  in  life  was,  in  short,  regarded  by 
him  as  proceeding  in  the  direction,  and  through  the 
medium,  of  the  qualities  contributing  to  success  and 
survival  in  a  kind  of  free  fight  amongst  the  individu- 
als of  each  generation.  The  qualities  with  which  he 
dealt  were  simply  those  which  had  relation  to  success 
or  survival  for  the  time  being  in  this  struggle.  They 
had  no  relation  to  any  other  function  or  utility  what- 
ever. 

Now  it  will  be  seen,  if  the  present  condition  of 
knowledge  is  compared  with  that  at  the  period  at 
which  Darwin  thus  left  the  hypothesis  of  Natural 
Selection,  that  a  development  of  great  significance 
has  taken  place  —  a  development  which  must  inevi- 
tably be  associated  in  the  future  with  a  shifting  of 
the  channels  in  which  thought  has  hitherto  flowed. 
While,  on  one  hand,  the  distinctive  Darwinian  prin- 
ciple of  Natural  Selection  holds  its  ground  with  all 
its  old  significance,  the  free  struggle  for  existence 
in  the  present  and  the  qualities  necessary  to  success 
therein,  which  Darwin  saw  shaping  the  whole  course 
of  progress,  is,  on  the  other  hand,  coming  slowly  but 
surely  to  occupy  a  changed  position  in  relation  to 
this  law.  We  see  the  curtain  being  gradually  lifted, 
as  it  were,  from  a  wider  range  of  phenomena  behind, 
to  which  the  interests  of  the  existing  generation  of 
individuals  in  this  struggle  are  coming  to  stand  in 
altogether  subordinate  relationship. 

When  we  look  at  the  statement  of  the  law  of  Natu- 
ral Selection  as  Darwin  left  it,  it  may  be  perceived 


44  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

on  reflection  that  there  is  a  consequence  involved  in 
it  which  is  not  at  first  sight  apparent.  It  is  evident 
that  the  very  essence  of  the  principle  is  that  it  must 
act  in  the  manner  in  which  it  produces  the  most 
effective  results.  It  must  act  through  the  medium 
of  the  largest  numbers.  The  qualities  in  favour 
of  which  it  must,  in  the  long  run,  consistently  dis- 
criminate, are  those  which  most  effectively  subserve 
the  interests  of  the  largest  majority.  Yet  this  major- 
ity in  the  processes  of  life  can  never  be  in  the 
present.  It  is  always,  of  necessity,  the  majority 
which  constitutes  the  long  roll  of  the  yet  unborn 
generations.  Other  things  being  equal,  that  is  to 
say,  the  winning  qualities  in  the  evolutionary  process 
must  of  necessity  be  those  qualities  by  which  the 
interests  of  the  existing  individuals  have  been  most 
effectively  subordinated  to  those  of  the  generations 
yet  to  be  born. 

It  cannot,  in  short,  have  been  simply  the  qualities 
useful  to  the  individuals  in  a  mere  struggle  for 
present  existence  which  have  directed  the  process  of 
Natural  Selection  as  a  whole.  When  that  process  is 
viewed  in  operation  over  a  long  period  this  fact  be- 
comes evident.  In  the  strenuous  aeons  of  time,  dur- 
ing which  progress  followed  its  upward  path,  it  must 
have  been,  on  the  whole,  in  the  evolution  of  the 
qualities  contributing  to  the  interests  of  the  vast 
majority  in  the  future  that  the  controlling  meaning 
of  the  deeper  life-processes  always  centred.  It  must 
have  been  in  the  interests  of  this  majority  that 
Natural  Selection,  in  the  long  run,  continuously  dis- 
criminated. It  must  have  been  always  these  infinitely 
larger  interests  in  the  future  that  overweighted  all 


n  PROJECTED   EFFICIENCY  45 

others.  Nay,  we  may  go  so  far  as  to  say  that,  under 
the  law  of  Natural  Selection,  as  we  come  to  under- 
stand it  in  this  light,  the  interests  of  the  individual 
in  those  adjustments  "profitable  to  itself,"  which 
filled  so  large  a  place  in  the  minds  of  the  early  Dar- 
winians, have  actually  no  place,  except  in  so  far  as 
they  are  included  in,  and  have  contributed  to,  this 
larger  end  in  the  future. 

Accordingly,  if  we  follow  now  the  course  of  the 
work  and  research  which,  since  Danvin's  death,  has 
been  enlarging  the  scope  of  his  work,  it  may  be  dis. 
tinguished  that  there  has  been  a  gradual  but  certain 
shifting  of  what  may  be  called  the  centre  of  signifi- 
cance in  the  evolutionary  conception.  It  is  not  so 
much  that  there  has  been  a  growing  tendency  to 
emphasise  the  struggle  for  the  life  of  the  young ;  or 
the  struggle  for  the  life  of  the  majority  of  the  species 
as  at  any  time  existing ;  or  the  struggle  for  the  life 
of  the  social  aggregate  —  as  against  the  struggle  for 
the  life  of  the  individual  qua  individual.  All  these 
features  have  received  deserved  and  increasing  at- 
tention. But  they  do  not,  in  principle,  carry  the 
law  of  Natural  Selection  beyond  the  point  at  which 
Darwin  left  it.  That  is  to  say,  the  centre  of  signifi- 
cance in  the  evolutionary  process  is,  in  such  discus- 
sions, still  left  in  effect  where  Darwin  placed  it, 
namely,  in  the  present.1  The  principle  with  which 

1  In  a  passage  in  the  Origin  of  Species,  Darwin  comes  almost  in 
sight  of  the  principle  here  discussed.  Speaking  of  the  term  "  struggle 
for  existence,"  as  used  in  a  large  sense,  he  says :  "  I  should  premise 
that  I  use  this  term  in  a  large  and  metaphorical  sense,  including  de- 
pendence of  one  being  on  another,  and  including  (which  is  more  im- 
portant) not  only  the  life  of  the  individual,  but  success  in  having 
progeny"  (c.  iii.).  The  idea  which  this  passage  covers  was,  however, 


46  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

we  are  here  concerned  has  a  different  and  altogether 
wider  significance.1 

One  of  the  first  contributions,  which  may  be  said 
to  have  directed  general  attention  to  the  importance 
of  the  view  which  it  is  desired  here  to  emphasise, 
was  a  remarkable  essay 2  read  before  the  association 
of  German  naturalists  held  at  Salzberg  in  1881, 
seven  months  after  Darwin's  death.  The  writer  was 
Professor  August  Weismann,  of  the  University  of 
Freiburg  in  Breisgau.  In  this  paper  the  causes  which 
determine  the  duration  of  individual  existence  in  vari- 
ous forms  of  life  were  discussed  from  a  point  of  view 
which  at  once  attracted  notice.  Hitherto  the  pre- 
vailing opinions  as  to  the  causes  which  determine 
the  average  length  of  individual  life  may  be  said  to 
have  run  along  two  main  lines,  with  which  readers 
of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  Biology  will  be  familiar. 
According  to  one  theory,  to  which  Leuckart  and 
other  writers  had  given  support,  and  which  may  be 
called  the  theory  of  external  control,  the  duration  of 
life  was  to  be  taken  as  determined  by  the  size  of 
the  individual  and  the  complexity  of  its  structure. 
Or  briefly,  to  put  it  in  terms  used  by  Mr.  Spencer, 

very  little  developed,  and  of  the  larger  conception  of  the  projection  of 
the  controlling  centre  of  the  evolutionary  process,  altogether  beyond 
the  concerns  and  interests  of  the  existing  individuals,  we  do  not  come 
in  sight. 

1  There  is  a   close  connection,  as  we  shall  see  later,  between  the 
effort  which  -has  tended  to  emphasise  this  feature  of  the  evolutionary 
hypothesis  and  that  utilitarian  movement  in  English  thought,  referred 
to  in  the  last  chapter,  which  has  reached  its  most  complete  expression 
in  Herbert  Spencer's  philosophy.    The  fundamental  conception  in  each 
case  is  that  the  controlling  meaning  of  the  evolutionary  process  lies 
within  the  horizon  of  the  present. 

2  The  Duration  of  Life. 


ii  PROJECTED   EFFICIENCY  47 

greater  length  and  degree  of  life  were  to  be  regarded 
as  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  greater  integra- 
tion.1 According  to  the  other  view,  which  may  be 
described  as  the  theory  of  internal  control,  length 
of  life  was  to  be  taken  as  related  to  the  structure, 
and  inherent  chemical  constitution,  of  the  cells  of 
which  the  body  was  composed.  It  was  believed  to 
be  largely  influenced  by  the  rate  at  which  the  vital 
processes  take  place,  inertness  of  habit  contributing 
to  relatively  great  length  of  life,  and  vice  versa. 

Down  to  the  time  at  which  Professor  Weismann's 
paper  was  published,  it  was  admitted  that  there  were 
great  and  unexplained  difficulties  in  the  way  of  both 
views,  a  large  class  of  facts  being  quite  irreconcilable 
with  either.  It  was  perfectly  true  that  there  were 
large  animals  endowed  with  great  longevity ;  but  so 
also,  and  to  an  equal  extent,  were  many  small  ani- 
mals. Similarly,  inertness  of  habit  might  appear  to 
be  correlated  with  length  of  life ;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  some  of  the  most  marked  instances  of  extraor- 
dinary longevity  were  to  be  found  amongst  a  class 
of  animals  where  the  vital  processes  take  place  with 
the  greatest  rapidity,  namely,  the  birds  ;  this  class 
also,  on  the  whole,  surpassing  even  the  mammalia  in 
average  duration  of  life.2 

There  was  one  fact,  however,  which  was  held  to 
stand  out  clearly.  It  was  that  Natural  Selection 
must  in  any  case  have  tended  to  procure  the  greatest 
possible  advantage,  and  the  highest  possible  degree 

1  Principles  of  Psychology,  §  1 72.     See  also  Principles  of  Biology, 

H  31-71- 

2  Cf.  Essays   upon    Heredity,   vol.   i.,    by  August  Weismann;    The 
Duration  of  Life,  trs.  by  A.  K.  Shipley. 


48  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

of  self-realisation,  for  the  individual  in  the  actual 
conditions  of  its  existence.  Mr.  Spencer  had  indeed 
developed  this  view  in  his  theory  of  human  society, 
where  he  regarded  the  significance  of  the  culmina- 
tion of  life  in  the  social  state  as  consisting  largely  in 
the  fact  that  therein,  at  last,  the  lives,  not  only  of 
each,  but  of  all,  tended  to  be  "  the  greatest  possible 
alike  in  length  and  breadth."  * 

The  deep  impression  produced  by  Professor  Weis- 
mann's  paper  may  be  at  once  understood  when 
it  is  said  that  the  author  not  only  challenged  the 
assumption  underlying  all  this  series  of  prevailing 
opinions,  but  boldly  advanced  to  the  remarkable  con- 
clusions :  (i)  that  the  duration  of  life  in  the  individual 
was  not  primarily  due  to  external  physical  conditions, 
nor  to  molecular  causes  inherent  in  organic  nature2; 
(2)  that  throughout  the  higher  forms  of  life,  so  far 
from  nature  tending  to  secure  the  longest  life  to  the 
individual,  the  tendency,  on  the  contrary,  was,  other 
things  being  equal,  rather  to  shorten  its  duration3; 
and  (3)  that  duration  of  life  had  no  ultimate  relation 
to  self-realisation  in  the  individual,  but  was  really 
dependent  upon  conditions,  which  involved  that,  "  its 
length,  whether  shorter  or  longer,  was  governed  by 
the  needs  of  the  species."4  In  other  words,  the 
average  duration  of  life  was  an  adaptation  developed 
in  the  individual  under  the  influence  of  Natural 
Selection,  and  in  relation  to  principles  and  causes 
which  far  transcended  the  range  of  his  own  interests. 

The  fact  which  Professor  Weismann  found  in  the 

1  The  Principles  of  Ethics,  §  48. 

2  Essays  on  Heredity,  vol.  i.;    The  Duration  of  Life,  p.  24. 

8  7  he  Duration  of  Life,  p.  II.  *  Ibid.  pp.  9,  24,  25. 


II  PROJECTED  EFFICIENCY  49 

ascendant  was,  therefore,  the  need  of  the  species  as 
spread  over  a  prolonged  period  in  the  conditions  of 
life  with  which  it  was  confronted.  To  put  his  mean- 
ing metaphorically,  the  standard  corresponding  to  this 
need  of  the  species  was,  as  it  were,  projected  in  front 
of  the  advancing  form  of  life.  It  was  the  average 
type  which  conformed  most  nearly  to  it  that  had  been 
selected.  The  types  in  which  other  tendencies  had 
found  expression  had  not  survived  to  represent  them. 
Amongst  forms,  for  instance,  existing  in  an  environ- 
ment which  was  rapidly  changing,  the  necessary  series 
of  variations  from  which  adjustment  could  be  devel- 
oped, would  be  more  suitably  and  easily  secured  in 
generations  which  were  short-lived  than  among  gen- 
erations comprised  of  long-lived  individuals.  Among 
the  latter  adjustment  might  fail  altogether ;  and  their 
kind  would,  in  any  case,  tend,  after  the  lapse  of  time, 
to  be  handicapped  in  competition  with  the  short-lived 
generations.1  From  actual  examples  the  conclusion 
was  enforced  that  it  was  this  need  of  the  species,  and 
not  simply  molecular  peculiarity  unchangeably  inher- 
ent in  life,  which  must  be  held  to  be  the  cause  con- 
trolling and  dominating,  at  least  within  wide  limits, 
the  conflicting  facts  from  which  previous  observers 
had  endeavoured  to  construct  their  theories.  To 
serve  the  needs  of  the  species,  and  not  the  interest 

1  Reading  the  essay  closely  now,  we  see  how  much  farther  Professor 
Weismann's  views  carry  us  than  even  the  author  appeared  to  be  con- 
scious of  at  the  time.  He  apparently  contemplated  the  advantage  to 
the  species  from  the  shortening  of  the  term  of  duration  of  life  in  the 
individual  to  he  related  to  the  number  of  offspring  produced.  The 
utility  associated  with  the  widened  basis  for  variation  may  be  said  to 
be  included  in  this,  but  the  subject  was  not  developed  towards  the 
conclusions  which  we  now  sec  to  be  inherent  in  it. 
E 


50  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

of  the  individual,  it  was  held  that  the  duration  of  life 
had  been  greatly  lengthened  out  in  a  great  number 
of  cases  to  which  it  was  possible  to  point.  In  other 
cases,  and  even  in  nearly  allied  species,  the  duration 
of  life  had  been  shortened  to  a  remarkable  degree ; 
and  here  again  obviously  under  the  influence  of  the 
same  cause  of  Natural  Selection  operating  towards 
ends  to  which  "the  length  and  breadth  of  life  in  the 
individual  "  were  quite  subordinate. 

In  this  remarkable  essay  —  the  first  of  a  series  of 
memoirs  the  important  bearing  of  which  on  the  ten- 
dencies of  Western  thought  is  only  beginning  to  be 
fully  understood,  and  the  general  meaning  of  which 
has  been  in  the  past  in  some  degree  obscured  by  the 
technicalities  of  the  controversies  to  which  it  has 
given  rise  —  the  nature  of  the  central  idea  which 
carries  us  beyond  Darwin's  standpoint  is  already 
apparent.  We  begin  to  see  that  in  so  ultimate  and 
fundamental  a  matter  as  the  average  duration  of  life 
in  the  individual,  the  determining  and  controlling 
end,  towards  which  Natural  Selection  has  operated, 
must  have  been,  not  simply  the  benefit  of  the  indi- 
vidual, nor  even  of  his  contemporaries,  in  a  mere 
struggle  for  existence  in  the  present,  but  a  larger 
advantage,  probably  always  far  in  the  future,  to  which 
the  individual  and  the  present  alike  were  subordinated. 
This  extended  view  taken  of  the  operation  of  the  law 
of  Natural  Selection,  and  the  consequent  shifting 
into  a  region  no  longer  bounded  by  the  conception 
of  advantage  to  existing  individuals  of  the  end 
towards  which  Natural  Selection  works,  marks  the 
departure  we  are  considering.  As  the  co-author  of 
the  Darwinian  hypothesis  saw,  writing  seven  years 


ii  PROJECTED   EFFICIENCY  51 

after,  the  range  of  the  law  of  Natural  Selection  had 
begun  to  be  extended  into  a  new  sphere.1 

This  was,  however,  only  the  example  which  served 
to  strongly  emphasise  the  nature  of  the  transition 
which  had  begun.  The  idea,  to  which  clear  and 
simple  expression  had  here  been  given,  was  to  be- 
come the  connecting  and  underlying  principle  in  a 
many-sided  movement  in  biology  in  which,  as  we 
are  beginning  to  perceive,  all  the  tendencies  in  mod- 
ern thought  are  likely,  sooner  or  later,  to  become 
involved.2 

Now  it  will  be  noticed,  if  we  turn  again  for 
a  moment  to  the  Origin  of  Species,  how  in  this 
book,  and  almost  to  the  same  extent  in  the  others 
that  followed  it,  Darwin,  in  dealing  with  the  effect 
of  Natural  Selection  operating  on  individuals  en- 
gaged in  a  struggle  for  existence,  carried  his  exam- 
ination up  to  a  certain  fixed  limit  and  no  farther. 

1  Mr.  Alfred  Russel  Wallace,  speaking  of  the  exceeding  interest  of 
Professor  Weismann's  essay,  mentions  that  the  idea  had  occurred  to 
himself  some   twenty  years  before.     It  had  been  briefly  noted  down 
at   the   time,    but   subsequently   forgotten.     See   Darwinism,   p.   437 
(note).     The  idea  as  jotted  down  was  published  by  the  editors  as  a 
footnote  to  the   English  translation  of  the   Weismann  essay  on    the 
Duration  of  Life  (see  Essays,  vol.  i.  p.  23). 

2  This  movement   is  a  good  example  of  the  great   importance  in 
modern  scientific  research   of  the  discovery  of  principles  as  a  cause 
of  progress.      Romanes  has  remarked  that  his  own  observation  led 
him  to  the  conclusion   that  in    recent   times   progress   in    biological 
science   had  been   not  so  much   marked   by  the  march  of  discovery 
fer  se  as  by  the  altered  views  of  method  which  the  march  has  in- 
volved.    The  tendency  at  one  time  had  been  to  trust  simply  to  the 
collection  of  facts.     Now  it  was  beginning  to  be  seen  that  it  was 
the  discovery  of  causes  or  principles  to  which  the  collection  of  facts 
led  that  was   the  ultimate   object  of  scientific  quest    (Darwin  ana" 
after  Darwin,  vol.  i.,  Introduction). 


52  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

Beyond  this  a  wide  range  of  phenomena,  amongst 
which  may  be  included  reproduction,  sex,  variation, 
death,  and  to  some  extent  heredity,  were  accepted 
as  being  in  a  sense  irresolvable  prime  causes,  be- 
yond which,  therefore,  scrutiny  was  not  carried. 
As,  however,  from  this  point  forward  we  watch  the 
reach  of  the  law  of  Natural  Selection  being  slowly  ex- 
tended, we  see  these  phenomena,  one  after  another, 
being  submitted  to  analysis  with  surprising  results. 

To  grasp  the  significance,  as  regards  the  subject 
with  which  we  are  dealing,  of  the  movement  in 
modern  biology  which  the  Weismann  theories  as  a 
whole  represent,  it  is  necessary,  and  more  especially 
when  the  mind  is  well  acquainted  with  the  technical 
details  of  the  controversies  to  which  these  theories 
have  given  rise,  that  attention  should  be  kept  con- 
tinuously fixed  on  the  central  principle  with  which 
we  are  here  concerned. 

The  imagination  of  the  early  Darwinians  had  been 
impressed  with  the  struggle  for  existence  as  they 
perceived  it  in  the  immediate  foreground.  It  was 
the  effects  on  the  existing  individuals  of  this  cease- 
less contemporary  struggle  which  occupied  their  at- 
tention, and  became  the  subject  of  most  of  their 
theories.  In  the  larger  view  which  now  begins  to 
prevail,  what  we  see  is,  as  it  were,  the  battleground 
on  which  Natural  Selection  produces  the  most  im- 
portant results  in  the  struggle  of  life  projected  into 
the  vast  stretches  of  the  future.  It  is  those  appar- 
ently irresolvable  phenomena  of  reproduction,  sex, 
variation,  death,  and  heredity,1  which  become  in  this 

1  It  is  a  remarkable  feature  of  recent  biology  that,  while  the  dis- 
tinctive Darwinian  principle  of  Natural  Selection  has  come  to  dominate 


ii  PROJECTED  EFFICIENCY  53 

respect  the  centres  of  struggle  around  which  the 
main  problems  of  efficiency  in  the  drama  of  evolu- 
tion are  worked  out  by  the  operation  of  the  law  of 
Natural  Selection.  In  the  process  of  selection  from 
which  the  curtain  now  rises,  we  see  not  only  indi- 
viduals, but  whole  generations,  nay,  entire  species 
and  types,  unconsciously  pitted  against  each  other 
for  long  ages  in  a  struggle  in  which  efficiency  in  the 
future  is  the  determining  quality ;  and  in  which  only 
the  types  in  which  the  problems  involved  have  pro- 
gressed farthest  towards  solution  remain  at  last  to 
transmit  their  efficiency.  We  are,  in  short,  brought 
within  view  of  a  wide  range  of  phenomena  which 
Darwin  had  not  discussed,  and,  in  all  probability, 
had  not  imagined.  In  the  struggle,  as  we  now  begin 
to  see  it,  the  interests  of  the  individual  and  the  pres- 
ent alike  are  presented  as  overlaid  by  the  interests  of 
a  majority  which  is  always  in  the  future.  We  behold 
the  whole  drama  of  progress  in  life  becoming  instinct, 
as  it  were,  with  a  meaning  which  remains  continually 
projected  beyond  the  content  of  the  present. 

In  the  next  step  in  the  inquiry  we  see  the  principle 
of  Natural  Selection  carried  right  into  the  heart  of 
apparently  the  most  inscrutable  of  all  the  problems 
which  Darwin  had  left  untouched.  Weismann's 
theory  as  to  the  period  of  the  duration  of  life  had 
gone  to  show  that  amongst  the  higher  forms  of  life, 

all  our  conceptions  of  the  evolutionary  process,  Darwin's  position,  in 
many  cases,  has  been  already  left  far  behind,  and  mostly  by  the  appli- 
cation of  his  own  principle.  Compare,  for  instance,  Darwin's  position 
on  such  subjects  as  inheritance,  sex,  variation,  heredity,  in  his  theories 
of  heredity  and  pangcncsis,  in  I'ariation  of  Animals  and  riants  under 
Domestication,  vol.  ii.  chap,  xxvii.;  Descent  of  Man,  chaps,  vii.-x. ;  and 
Origin  of  Species,  chaps,  i.-iv. 


54  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

so  far  from  the  duration  of  existence  in  the  individual 
depending  ultimately  on  any  inherent  molecular  con- 
stitution of  the  cells  of  the  body,  it  had  throughout 
the  various  forms  of  life  been  lengthened  or  curtailed 
by  Natural  Selection  just  as  the  needs  of  the  species 
had  required.  In  the  lowest  or  single-celled  forms 
of  life,  however,  there  was  nothing  corresponding  to 
the  phenomena  of  natural  death  at  all.  In  these 
forms  the  cycle  of  existence  was  unending.  At  a 
certain  stage  of  growth  each  individual  simply  di- 
vided into  two,  each  separate  part  of  the  parent  con- 
tinuing to  live  and  grow  until  it  again  divided,  and  so 
on  indefinitely.  Hence  arose  the  most  daring  inquiry 
to  which  biology  had  as  yet  advanced. 

If  in  the  lowest  types  of  life  the  cycle  of  existence 
was  normally  unending :  if  in  the  higher  forms  the 
cycle  of  the  life  of  the  cells  of  which  the  body  was 
composed  was  capable  of  being  greatly  lengthened 
out  or  of  being  rigidly  curtailed  just  as  the  need 
of  the  species  required: — was  the  phenomenon  of 
the  periodic  death  of  the  individual  at  the  point  at 
which  it  began  to  be  encountered  in  nature  —  namely, 
amongst  the  multicellular  forms  of  life  —  to  be  con- 
sidered as  due  to  causes  inherent  from  the  beginning 
in  the  nature  of  the  cells  themselves,  any  more  than 
the  length  of  the  life-cycle  in  the  higher  forms  of  life 
was  to  be  considered  as  due  to  such  causes  ?  In 
other  words,  had  not  this  phenomenon  also  some  re- 
lation to  the  law  of  Natural  Selection  ?  Had  it  not 
behind  it,  in  short,  some  principle  of  massive  utility 
in  the  evolutionary  process  at  the  point  at  which  it 
began  to  be  encountered  —  a  principle  of  utility  the 
significance  of  which  must  have  been  projected  alto- 


II  PROJECTED   EFFICIENCY  55 

gether  beyond  the  mere  interest  of  the  individual  for 
the  time  being  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question  is  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  in  biology.  It  may  be  considered,  said 
Professor  Weismann,  in  effect,  that  life  came  to  be 
permanently  endowed  with  a  fixed  duration  in  the 
individual  —  at  the  point  at  which  we  first  encounter 
this  phenomenon,  amongst  the  multicellular  forms 
—  under  the  operation  of  the  law  of  Natural  Selec- 
tion ;  and  because  of  the  utility  of  such  a  phenome- 
non in  the  upward  process  of  progress  upon  which 
life  had  entered.1 

The  direction  in  which  the  suggested  principle 
of  utility  lay,  we  may  now  perceive  even  more 
clearly  than  did  Professor  Weismann  at  the  time.2 
The  phenomenon  at  the  base  of  all  the  progress 
which  life  had  made  was  that  of  variation  ;  for  it 
was  this  which  supplied  the  raw  material  upon  which 
Natural  Selection  had  worked.  It  was  evident,  how- 

1  Essays  upon  Heredity,  vol.  i.,  by  August  Weismann  ;    The  Dura- 
tion of  Life  ;  Life  and  Death. 

2  While  Professor  Weismann  saw  from  the  outset  that  the  tendency 
would  be  for  the  life  of  the  individual,  endowed  with  an  indefinite  term 
of  duration,  to  be  shortened  by  the  amount  which  was  useless  to  the 
species,  he  did  not  clearly  connect  the  utility  of  short-lived  generations 
with  the  greater  opportunity  allowed  for  variation.     Two  of  the  most 
suggestive  passages  were  those  in  which  it  was  pointed  out  that  the 
operation  of  Natural  Selection  would  be  to  reduce  the  life  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  a  length  which  would  afford  the  most  favourable  conditions 
for  the  existence  of  as  large  a  number  as  possible  of  vigorous  individu- 
als at  the  same  time,  and  that  in  which  it  was  stated  that  "  worn-out 
individuals  are  not  only  valueless  to  the  species,  but  are  even  harmful, 
for  they  take  the  place  of  those  which  are  sound."    Cf.  Essays,  vol.  i.  ; 
Duration  of  Life,  pp.    24,    25  ;    Life  and  Death,  pp.    134-135,   and 
154-159  ;    The  Significance  of  Sexual  Reproduction  in  the  Theory  of 
Natural  Selection,  pp.  284-285. 


56  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

ever,  as  soon  as  attention  became  fixed  upon  the 
causes  of  variation  in  the  types  of  life  above  the  uni- 
cellular forms,  that  if  the  individuals  amongst  the 
higher  forms  of  life  had  continued  to  be  endowed 
with  indefinite  length  of  existence,  in  one  important 
respect  at  least,  progress  would  have  been  handi- 
capped ;  and  that  a  vast  series  of  results  which  we 
have  come  to  associate  with  the  later  and  higher  pro- 
cesses of  evolution  could  not  have  arisen.  For  with  in- 
dividuals occupying  their  places  in  nature  indefinitely, 
there  would  have  been  no  room  for  variation,  adapta- 
tion, and  progress,  as  we  have  come  to  witness  these 
phenomena  among  the  higher  forms  of  life.  Such 
forms  must  have  been,  other  things  being  equal,  in 
this  respect  at  least,  at  a  disadvantage  in  competition 
with  forms  represented  by  periodically  recurring  gen- 
erations. The  periodical  death  of  the  units  was,  in 
short,  indicated  as  the  necessary  accompaniment  of 
the  advance  which  was  being  made.  The  individual 
must  die  to  serve  the  larger  interest  of  his  kind  in 
the  immense  process  of  progress  upon  which  life  had 
entered.1 

1  It  may  be  seen  at  once,  when  the  mind  has  mastered  the  subject, 
that  the  Weismann  conception  of  the  endowment  of  life  with  a  fixed 
duration  in  the  individual,  as  here  discussed,  is  more  essentially  scien- 
tific, than  any  alternative  theory  of  the  limitation  of.  life  in  the  indi- 
vidual as  due  to  mechanical  causes,  or  to  the  molecular  constitution  of 
the  cells.  For  against  the  latter  theory  as  mere  conjecture  (rendered 
to  some  extent  doubtful,  from  the  fact  that  the  length  of  the  cycle  of 
life  in  the  individual  is  lengthened  out  or  curtailed  under  our  eyes,  to 
serve  the  needs  of  the  species),  there  must  be  set  the  certainty  that, 
if  forms  of  life  (subject  to  infinitesimal  variation)  had  been  endowed 
with  indefinite  longevity,  Natural  Selection  must  in  the  long  run  have 
eliminated  them  and  have  arrived  at  the  phenomenon  of  a  fixed  dura- 
tion in  the  individual  as  we  now  know  it.  We  are,  in  short,  bound  to 


II  PROJECTED   EFFICIENCY  57 

The  deep  significance  of  the  central  idea  here  out- 
lined will  become  clear  if  the  mind  is  allowed  to 
dwell  upon  it.  We  see  the  early  Darwinian  concep- 
tion—  of  the  individual  in  the  struggle  for  existence, 
and  of  its  relation  to  advantages  secured  therein 
"  profitable  to  itself "  —  being  overlaid  by  a  larger 
meaning.  It  was  evident  that  when  we  conceived 
the  law  of  Natural  Selection  operating  through  un- 
limited periods  of  time,  and  concerned  with  the 
indefinitely  larger  interests  of  numbers  always  infi- 
nite and  always  in  the  future,  that  we  had  in  view  a 
principle  of  which  there  had  been  no  clear  conception 
at  first,  namely,  a  principle  of  inherent  necessity  in 
the  evolutionary  process  compelling  ever  towards  the 
sacrifice  on  a  vast  scale  of  the  present  and  the  indi- 
vidual in  the  interests  of  the  future  and  the  universal. 
The  central  phenomenon  with  which  life  has  ever 
been  associated  in  the  human  mind  has  been  that  of 
the  death  of  the  individual.  But  here  we  had  this 
phenomenon  presented  to  us  at  an  early  stage  in  the 
evolutionary  process  as  the  fundamental  expression 
of  this  principle  of  the  sacrifice  of  the  individual, 

accept  theWeismann  conception  as  a  working  hypothesis  in  preference 
to  the  other.  If  we  adopt  Herbert  Spencer's  definition  of  life  as  "the 
continuous  adjustment  of  internal  relations  to  external  relations  "  two 
things  will  be  evident  :  (l)  that  the  most  cumbersome  and  least  effi- 
cient method  (if  we  can  imagine  it  as  having  been  possible)  of  obtain- 
ing this  continuous  adjustment  would  be  where  it  had  to  take  place  in 
the  actual  person  of  a  complex  individual  endowed  with  indefinite 
length  of  life  ;  (2)  that  on  the  other  hand  the  most  direct  and  efficient 
adjustment  would  take  place  by  selection  where  the  number  of  effective 
generations  was  largest  ;  that  is  to  say,  where  the  life  of  each  indi- 
vidual was  limited  to  the  time  necessary  for  reaching  maturity  and  for 
the  production  and  efficient  equipment  of  offspring.  It  is  this  direct 
path  that  appears  to  have  been  followed  in  life. 


58  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

underlying  from  the  outset  the  vast  progression 
which  life  had  begun  to  make  upwards. 

In  recent  biological  thought  from  this  point  for- 
ward, we  may  be  said  to  be  in  full  view  of  the  charac- 
teristic development  we  have  been  endeavouring  to 
describe.  We  see  the  centre  of  gravity  in  the  evo- 
lutionary hypothesis  in  process  of  being  definitely 
shifted  out  of  the  present  into  the  future.  We  see 
the  Darwinian  principle  of  Natural  Selection  being 
accepted  with  increasing  certainty  as  the  ruling 
principle  throughout  the  processes  of  life.  But  we 
see  it  no  longer  regarded  as  related  in  all  its  meaning 
to  the  interests  of  individuals,  "red  in  tooth  and 
claw  with  ravine,"  in  a  contemporary  struggle  for 
existence  in  the  immediate  foreground,  which  filled 
the  imagination  of  the  early  Darwinians. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  enter  here  upon  the  techni- 
calities of  the  wide  issues  which  have  been  raised  by 
the  further  group  of  theories  enunciated  by  Professor 
Weismann  under  such  titles  as  the  Continuity  of  the 
Germ-Plasm,  the  Non-Inheritance  of  Acquired  Quali- 
ties, the  Significance  of  Sexual  Reproduction  in  the 
Theory  of  Natural  Selection,  and  Retrogressive  De- 
velopment, nor  upon  the  merits  of  the  many  contro- 
versies that  have  been  waged  round  them.  Our 
concern  here  is  with  the  fact  which  now  stands  in 
the  background  behind  all  the  controversies  to  which 
these  theories  have  given  rise,  namely,  the  new  and 
larger  conception  of  the  method  of  the  operation  of 
the  principle  of  Natural  Selection  in  the  evolutionary 
process.  The  distinctive  feature  of  the  change  is 
the  relegation  to  a  secondary  place  of  the  interests 
of  the  individual  and  the  present,  and  the  emergence 


ii  PROJECTED  EFFICIENCY  59 

into  sight  of  causes  associated  with  the  interests  of 
the  future  and  the  universal,  through  the  medium 
of  which  Natural  Selection,  entirely  subordinating 
the  former  to  the  latter,  dominates  the  evolutionary 
process  towards  particular  ends  over  vast  periods  of 
time. 

If  we  take  up  the  subject  at  any  point  and  read 
between  the  lines  of  existing  controversies  it  may  be 
noticed  how  marked  this  feature  has  become.  In 
the  discussion,  for  instance,  of  the  phenomena  of 
sexual  reproduction  as  related  to  a  principle  of  mas- 
sive utility  in  the  phenomenon  of  variation,  there  has 
been  brought  into  view  the  principle  of  Natural 
Selection  operating  under  conditions  in  which  we 
have  continually  before  us  this  fact  of  the  interests 
of  the  future  weighting  all  the  processes  of  the 
present.  Whatever  may  be  the  outcome  of  conflicts 
of  opinion  to  which  particular  views  or  assertions 
have  given  rise,  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  main 
outlines  of  the  order  of  progress  as  it  is  now  pre- 
sented in  this  matter.  We  see  it  as  a  process  in 
which  generations,  species,  and  entire  types  have 
been  matched  against  each  other  in  a  function  of 
selection,  weighted  always  by  a  meaning  in  the 
future,  to  which  the  interests  of  individuals  and  gen- 
erations alike  have  become  entirely  subordinate.  We 
see  the  problem  of  reproduction  as  it  now  prevails 
amongst  the  higher  forms  of  life,  approached  by 
many  devious  and  tentative  paths  amongst  the  early 
types,  as  the  principle  of  utility  lying  behind  it 
begins  to  make  itself  felt  in  the  rivalry  of  existence. 
We  watch  the  outlines  of  the  immense  problem  grad- 
ually revealing  themselves,  and  notice  how  it  is  the 


6O  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

burden  of  the  generations  to  come  which  in  reality 
controls  the  direction  of  the  whole  process. 

Apart  from  all  outstanding  controversies  the  fun- 
damental features  of  the  problem  are  now  clearly 
apparent.  To  combine  together  the  hereditary  quali- 
ties of  two  distinct  individuals,  and  thereby  to  secure 
the  advantage  to  be  obtained  from  the  ceaseless 
mixing  together  of  the  individual  tendencies  to  varia- 
tion of  a  whole  species,  was  an  end  which  could  only 
be  accomplished  in  one  way.  In  every  new  life  it 
became  necessary  for  nature  to  return  to  the  original 
starting-point,  namely,  the  single  cell.  For  it  was 
at  this  stage,  and  here  only,  that  the  combination 
in  the  new  individual  of  the  hereditary  qualities  of 
both  parents  could  be  accomplished.1  We  perceive, 
therefore,  how  a  great  number  of  phenomena,  affect- 
ing, on  the  one  hand,  the  character  of  the  single  cells 
which  form  the  starting-point,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  character  of  the  adult  individuals, — phenomena 
for  which  the  most  far-fetched  and  fantastic  explana- 
tions have  been  sought  by  inquirers,  —  have  no  other 
meaning  than  the  simple  one  that  they  have  been 
adaptations  acquired  under  the  influence  of  Natural 
Selection  for  the  purpose  of  effecting  this  funda- 
mental necessity  to  which  life  had  been  rendered 
subject.  The  principle  of  utility  which  lay  behind 
the  higher  processes  of  reproduction  —  utility  to  the 
generations  always  in  the  future — has  been,  in 
short,  the  sole  end  which  has  silently  controlled  an 
immense  range  of  modifications  in  character,  func- 
tion, and  form,  which  we  see  in  progress  in  all  direc- 
tions as  development  has  continued  upwards. 

1  Essays,  by  A.  Weismann,  vol.  i.  pp.  152,  153. 


n  PROJECTED  EFFICIENCY  6l 

As  the  process  has  reached  the  higher  forms  of 
life  it  is  the  same  principle — the  subordination  of  the 
present  in  the  interests  of  the  future  —  which  is  to 
be  observed  working  itself  out  at  closer  distance,  and 
in  simpler  form.  On  the  one  hand,  we  have  the  ever- 
continued  progress  towards  increasing  differentiation 
of  function  and  complexity  of  structure  in  the  adult 
individual.  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  the  fixed 
and  immutable  necessity  imposed  upon  nature,  by 
the  fundamental  conditions  of  the  problem,  of  return- 
ing for  every  new  individual  life  to  exactly  the  same 
starting-point  as  at  the  beginning  —  the  single  cell.1 
The  effort  to  bridge  effectively  the  ever-increasing 
interval  of  helplessness  in  the  individual,  which  in- 
tervenes between  this  starting-point  and  the  adult 
stage  of  continuously  increasing  complexity,  gives 
rise  to  a  new  and  imposing  class  of  phenomena  in 
the  functions  which  begin  to  attach  to  parenthood. 
We  see  the  burden  of  the  future  continuing  to  press 
with  ever-increasing  weight  upon  the  present  as  these 
functions  develop  under  the  stress  of  Natural  Selec- 
tion. We  realise  how  great  a  struggle  has,  in  reality, 
centred  round  this  institution  of  parenthood  through- 
out the  evolution  of  life,  and  see  how  one  type  after 
another  has  failed  and  fallen  behind,  in  the  struggle 
to  meet  in  the  most  efficient  manner  the  growing 
demands  of  the  future  upon  the  present.  The  lower 
forms  of  life,  in  which  the  young  leave  the  egg  in  an 
immature  state  and  are  cast  upon  the  world  without 
parental  care,  are  gradually  left  behind.  In  the  birds 
the  burden  of  the  future  is  more  efficiently  met. 
Development  is  carried  far  forward  in  the  egg,  and 

1  Cf.  Essays,  by  A.  Weismann,  vol.  i.  pp.  152,  153. 


62  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  young  have  the  advantage  of  parental  care  after- 
wards. In  the  mammals,  another  shoot  on  the  tree 
of  life  has  carried  the  possibilities  of  parenthood 
much  higher.  The  young  are  no  longer  subjected  to 
the  risks  of  a  separate  existence  in  the  egg,  and  they 
continue  to  receive  sustenance  and  care  for  a  length- 
ened period  after  birth.  In  the  mammals  themselves 
we  see  the  same  stream  of  development  in  progress 
in  the  rise  from  the  marsupials  to  the  placentals. 
Entire  species  and  types,  failing,  as  it  were,  under 
the  burden  of  the  future,  gradually  drop  out  of  the 
race  as  Natural  Selection,  dominating  the  evolu- 
tionary process  towards  a  particular  end  over  im- 
mense stretches  of  time,  carries  the  leading  shoot  of 
life  gradually  upwards  towards  man. 

As  progress  has  continued  toward  increasing  com- 
plexity of  structure  in  the  individual,  on  the  one  hand, 
so  has  the  interval  of  development  to  be  spanned  in 
the  life  of  every  individual,  continued  to  be  length- 
ened out,  on  the  other.  Heavier  and  heavier  has 
accordingly  grown  the  burden  of  parenthood.  More 
and  more  insistent  under  the  conditions  of  progress 
has  become  the  demand  of  the  future  upon  the 
present,  on  the  one  hand ;  more  and  more  urgent 
under  the  operation  of  Natural  Selection  has  grown 
the  necessity  for  meeting  it  efficiently,  on  the  other. 

In  all  this  we  have  only  the  simplest  and  most 
obvious  example  at  close  quarters  of  the  action  of  a 
principle  which  we  must  regard  as  operating  —  and 
as  a  rule  under  much  more  complex  conditions  —  in 
every  direction  throughout  life.1  In  the  operation 

1  It  is  interesting  to  notice  in  this  connection  the  grounds  upon 
which  Mr.  A.  R.  Wallace  has  recently  rejected  Darwin's  original  view 


ii  PROJECTED   EFFICIENCY  63 

of  that  deep-seated  cause  in  life  which  makes  it  pos- 
sible for  the  higher  forms  to  maintain  their  places 
only  by  continuous  rivalry  and  selection,  it  cannot  be 
said  by  any  stretch  of  the  imagination  that  the  ad- 
vantage towards  which  Natural  Selection  is  working 
is  one  which  is  shared  in  by  the  existing  generation 
of  individuals.  With  the  resulting  advantage  accru- 
ing at  a  stage  always  beyond  the  limit  of  their 
existence  this  cannot  be. 

Yet  in  looking  back  along  the  road  that  life  has 
travelled  we  see  at  once  that,  however  injurious,  or 
even  fatal,  to  large  numbers  of  the  existing  indi- 

as  to  the  origin  of  a  multitude  of  colours,  markings,  plumes,  append- 
ages, etc.,  through  the  instrumentality  of  sexual  choice  made,  as  was 
assumed  by  Darwin,  in  accordance  with  some  internal  aesthetic  stand- 
ards in  the  mind  of  the  individual  of  unexplained  origin.  Mr.  Wallace 
has  come  to  regard  the  display  of  colours,  plumes,  and  appendages  in 
question  simply  as  the  external  indication  of  maturity  and  vigour  in  the 
male,  and  therefore  on  that  account  necessarily  attractive  to  the  female. 
The  aesthetic  standard  in  the  sexes  is,  in  fact,  itself  the  direct  product 
of  Natural  Selection  intimately  and  directly  correlated  with  an  end 
which  has  been  always  in  the  future,  namely,  the  peopling  of  the  world 
with  the  largest  possible  number  of  healthy  and  vigorous  descendants. 
Nay  more  —  and  here  we  have  the  deep  import  of  the  principle  —  no 
other  aesthetic  standard  with  which  such  a  result  was  not  associated, 
could,  in  the  long  run,  persist  simultaneously  with  it ;  for,  as  Mr.  Wal- 
lace observes,  the  "  extremely  rigid  action  of  Natural  Selection  must 
render  any  attempt  to  select  mere  ornament  utterly  nugatory,  unless 
the  most  ornamented  always  coincide  with  '  the  fittest '  in  every  other 
respect"  (Darwinism,  p.  295).  There  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the 
direction  in  which  we  are  travelling  in  this  subject.  The  firm  ground 
here  reached  may  with  advantage  be  compared  by  any  interested 
student  with  the  early  position  occupied  by  Darwin  in  the  following 
passage,  "  How  it  comes  that  certain  colours,  sounds,  and  forms  should 
give  pleasure  to  man  and  the  lower  animals,  —  that  is,  how  the  sense 
of  beauty  in  its  simplest  form  was  first  acquired,  —  we  do  not  know 
any  more  than  how  certain  odours  and  flavours  were  first  rendered 
agreeable  "  (Origin  of  Species,  chap.  xv.). 


64  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

viduals  at  any  time  may  have  been  the  conditions  of 
existence,  if  such  conditions  were,  nevertheless,  those 
most  advantageous  to  future  generations  of  their  kind, 
Natural  Selection  must  have  discriminated  in  favour 
of  the  form  of  life  amongst  which  they  prevailed. 
The  individuals  may  have  had  their  struggle  bur- 
dened, their  interests  sacrificed,  the  content  of  their 
lives  curtailed  by  length  and  breadth ;  and  yet  that 
form  must  have  come  down  to  us  as  a  winning  type, 
having  gradually  pushed  aside  and  survived  all  rivals 
which  were  not  equipped  to  this  end ;  and  this  not- 
withstanding any  other  advantage  whatever  that  its 
competitors  may  have  possessed. 

Once  we  have  grasped  the  general  application  of 
the  principle  here  discussed,  its  importance  through- 
out the  entire  range  of  the  evolutionary  process  will 
be  evident.  Once  we  come  to  regard  Natural  Selec- 
tion as  the  controlling  and  dominating  agency  behind 
all  the  developments  in  progress  throughout  life,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  significance  of  the  position 
towards  which  modern  biology  has  advanced.  The 
centre  of  gravity  in  the  evolutionary  conception  can 
no  longer  be  regarded  as  being  in  the  present.  We 
can  no  longer  with  the  early  evolutionists  regard  only 
the  effects  produced  by  Natural  Selection  on  the  in- 
dividual engaged  in  a  struggle  for  existence  waged 
simply  with  those  other  individuals  around  it  "with 
which  it  comes  into  competition  for  food  or  residence, 
or  from  which  it  has  to  escape,  or  on  which  it  preys." l 
From  the  very  nature  of  the  principle  of  Natural  Se- 
lection we  see  that  it  must  produce  its  most  efficient 
results  where  it  acts  through  the  largest  numbers. 

1  Origin  of  Species,  chap.  iii. 


II  PROJECTED    EFFICIENCY  65 

The  interests  of  the  existing  individuals,  and  of  the 
present  time,  as  we  now  see  them,  are  of  importance 
only  in  so  far  as  they  are  included  in  the  interests  of 
this  unseen  majority  in  the  future. 

In  the  development  with  which  we  have  been  con- 
cerned, it  is  necessary  to  consider  results  which 
appear  to  us  to  be  successive,  and  separated  by  vast 
intervals  of  time,  as  being  in  actual  effect  as  though 
they  had  been  simultaneous.  Keeping  this  fact  in 
mind,  it  will  be  seen  from  the  foregoing  that  we  must 
regard  the  evolutionary  process  in  life  as  proceed- 
ing under  the  domination  of  a  cause  which  we  may 
here  and  in  future  designate  as  the  principle  of  Pro- 
jected Efficiency.  The  winning  types  of  life  which 
have  come  down  from  the  beginning  are  those  which 
have  held  their  places  under  the  operation  of  this 
principle.  The  types  in  the  present  around  us  to 
which  the  future  belongs  are  those  which  will  hold 
it  under  the  operation  of  this  principle.  When  the 
future  arrives  it  will  be  the  forms  equipped  to  the 
best  effect  with  the  qualities  through  which  this 
principle  found  expression  which  will  have  survived 
to  represent  it.  If  it  were  possible  to  construct  the 
scientific  formula  of  life  for  any  existing  form  des- 
tined, hares  viventis,  to  maintain  its  place  in  the 
future,  the  interests  of  the  existing  individuals  would 
be  found  to  have  no  place  in  it,  except  in  so  far  as 
they  were  included  in  the  interests  of  the  majority 
which  is  in  the  future. 

The  condition  under  which  development  has  pro- 
ceeded in  life  throughout  measureless  epochs  of  time 
has  been,  in  short,  a  condition  in  which  the  shadow 
of  the  future  has  continually  rested  upon  the  present. 


66  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

growing  and  deepening  as  the  upward  process  has 
continued.  In  the  course  of  this  process  we  must 
consider  that  it  has  never  been  the  welfare  of  the 
infinitesimal  number  of  individuals  at  any  time  exist- 
ing which  constitutes  the  end  towards  which  Natural 
Selection  may  be  regarded  as  working.  It  is  always 
the  advantage  of  the  incomparably  larger  number  of 
individuals  yet  to  come  towards  which  the  whole  pro- 
cess moves. 

This  is  the  lesson,  for  the  social  sciences,  of  the 
modern  development  in  biology.  To  have  grasped, 
however  imperfectly,  its  application,  is  to  have 
caught  a  first  glimpse  of  the  nature  of  the  extraor- 
dinary revolution  which  the  evolutionary  hypothesis 
is  eventually  destined  to  accomplish  in  the  sciences 
dealing  with  the  principles  of  human  society.  It  is 
in  the  principle  here  discussed  that  we  undoubtedly 
have  the  clue  to  those  larger  ruling  causes  that  have 
controlled  the  course  of  progress  at  every  point 
throughout  the  past  history  of  life.  But  it  is  a  prin- 
ciple which  we  have  been,  so  far,  regarding  at  work 
only  in  the  lower  stages  of  an  ascending  process.  It 
is  as  we  have  now  to  watch  life  broadening  upwards 
towards  self-consciousness  that  we  begin  to  under- 
stand how  large  a  place  on  the  stage  of  the  world 
must  henceforward  be  filled  with  phenomena  arising 
out  of  the  continued  predominance  of  this  principle. 
It  is  as  we  come  slowly  into  view  of  a  reasoning 
creature  reaching  his  full  development  only  in  con- 
ditions of  social  order  in  which  the  demands  made 
by  the  future  upon  the  individual  and  the  present 
continue  of  necessity  to  grow  ever  more  and  more 
insistent  and  exacting ;  a  reasoning  creature,  withal, 


ii  PROJECTED   EFFICIENCY  67 

endowed  with  the  power  of  realising  the  present  at 
the  expense  of  the  future,  that  we  begin  to  perceive 
the  real  nature  of  the  gigantic  problem  which  lies  at 
the  base  of  all  society,  and  towards  the  solution  of 
which  all  human  development  moves. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE   POSITION    IN    MODERN    THOUGHT 

To  any  one  who  comes  fresh  from  the  study  of  the 
position  we  have  been  considering  in  the  last  chapter, 
the  modern  condition  of  the  sciences  dealing  with 
the  social  phenomena  of  our  civilisation  must  present 
features  of  unusual  interest.  We  have  seen  in  that 
chapter  how  the  movement  in  progress  in  recent 
biological  science  is  gradually  bringing  into  promi- 
nence a  principle  round  which  the  theory  of  the  evo- 
lution of  life,  by  Natural  Selection,  must  now  be 
considered  to  revolve.  Stated  in  a  few  words,  the 
effect  of  the  perception  of  this  principle  is  to  bring 
us  to  understand  how  all  previous  ideas  of  a  concilia- 
tion between  the  interests  of  the  existing  individuals 
of  any  progressive  form  of  life  and  those  of  the 
majority  of  their  kind,  must  give  way  to  a  conception 
of  life  as  involved  in  a  vast  antinomy  in  which  we  see 
the  present  continually  envisaged  with  the  future, 
and  in  which  it  is  never  the  present,  but  always  the 
future,  which  is  of  larger  importance.  We  have  seen 
how  in  this  conflict  it  is  only  those  forms  of  life 
among  which  the  interests  of  the  existing  individuals 
have  been  continually  subordinated  to  the  greater 
interest  of  their  kind  in  the  future  that  have  come 
down  to  us  as  winning  types,  and  how  amongst  every 
existing  form  destined  to  successfully  maintain  its 
place  in  the  rivalry  of  existence,  the  conditions  at 

68 


CHAP,  in        THE  POSITION  IN  MODERN  THOUGHT         69 

any  time  prevailing  must  of  necessity  be  those 
wherein  the  process  in  progress  is  weighted  and  con- 
trolled at  every  point,  not  by  the  interests  of  the 
present  individuals,  but  by  those  of  the  generations 
yet  in  the  future. 

As  the  mind  with  this  position  clearly  before  it 
is  concentrated  now  on  the  later  phases  of  the  evo- 
lutionary process  in  human  history,  and  more  par- 
ticularly on  the  aspects  of  that  process  as  they  are 
presented  in  the  complex  social  phenomena  of  the 
modern  world,  we  become  conscious  that  we  are 
regarding  one  of  the  most  remarkable  spectacles 
which  the  history  of  knowledge  presents. 

If  we  recognise  that  we  have  before  us  in  human 
society  the  last  and  most  important  phase  of  the 
evolutionary  process  in  life ;  if,  therefore,  we  con- 
sider that  the  law  which  we  have  beheld  in  operation 
from  the  beginning  —  that  law  which  at  every  point 
in  the  process  of  progress  necessitated  the  prevalence 
of  conditions  in  which  the  interests  of  the  present 
and  the  individual  were  subordinated  to  those  of  the 
future  and  the  universal  —  cannot  have  been  sus- 
pended in  human  society ;  if,  indeed,  we  must  rather 
consider  that  these  conditions  must  be  more  directly 
operative,  and  this  law,  therefore,  be  more  imperative 
in  human  society  than  ever  before  in  the  history  of 
life ;  —  then  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  nature 
of  the  position  which  confronts  us  at  the  threshold  of 
the  science  of  society.  It  would  seem  that  the  con- 
trolling fact  to  which  we  must  discover  every  princi- 
ple of  the  science  of  society  to  be  related,  is  that  the 
history  of  human  development  is,  in  the  last  resort, 
the  history  of  the  development  of  the  principles  by 


70  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

which  there  is  being  effected  the  subordination  of  the 
individual  to  a  process,  the  larger  meaning  of  which 
is  always  in  the  future. 

As  the  evolutionist  looks  the  conclusion  here 
stated  in  the  face  the  enormous  reach  of  its  mean- 
ing begins  to  be  visible  to  him.  For,  it  must  be,  he 
sees,  in  the  fact  here  brought  into  view  —  namely, 
that  the  history  of  human  development  is  to  be  re- 
garded as  the  history  of  the  development  of  the  con- 
ceptions, by  which  the  interests  of  the  present  are 
being  subordinated  to  those  of  a  process,  the  mean- 
ing of  which  is  projected  beyond  the  farthest  limits 
of  political  consciousness  —  that  we  have  the  ultimate 
principle  to  which  the  philosophy  of  history  is  related. 
It  must  be  primarily  along  the  line  of  the  operation 
of  this  principle  of  Projected  Efficiency  that  Natural 
Selection  is  discriminating  between  the  living,  the 
dying,  and  the  dead  in  human  society.  All  the  phe- 
nomena of  our  social  development  must,  therefore, 
whether  we  be  conscious  of  the  fact  or  not,  stand  in 
subordinate  relationship  to  it.  For  here,  as  else- 
where, we  see  that  in  the  formula  of  existence  for 
any  type  of  social  order  destined  to  maintain  its 
place  in  the  future,  the  interests  of  all  the  visible 
world  around  us  can  have  no  place,  except  in  so  far 
as  they  are  included  in  the  larger  interests  of  a  future 
to  which  they  are  entirely  subordinate. 

It  is  when,  with  these  facts  in  mind,  we  turn  now 
to  the  condition  of  political  theory  associated  with 
the  current  life  of  our  civilisation,  and  to  the  system 
of  social  philosophy  from  which  those  theories  pro- 
ceed, that  we  begin  to  realise  something  of  the 
nature  of  the  interval  which  is  likely  to  separate 


in  THE   POSITION   IN   MODERN  THOUGHT  /I 

the  epoch  in  the  history  of  Western  thought  through 
which  we  have  lived  from  the  period  of  change  upon 
which  we  are  entering. 

As  we  proceed  to  spread  before  us,  one  after 
another,  the  maps  of  the  systems  of  social  and  politi- 
cal theory  constructed  by  most  of  the  current  schools 
of  thought,  it  may  be  observed  that  they  present  a 
study  of  extraordinary  interest.  As  we  regard  these 
systems  attentively  and  notice  the  points  of  con- 
vergence and  difference,  and  the  ultimate  relation  of 
each  to  that  central  problem  which  they  all  discuss, 
we  may  observe,  after  a  time,  how  that  through  nearly 
all  of  them  there  runs  one  leading  idea.  In  whatever 
these  systems  of  theory  may  differ,  they  nearly  all 
resemble  each  other  in  one  fact.  They  are  engaged, 
we  may  distinguish,  in  stating  the  relations  to  each 
other  of  what  is  always  the  group  of  individuals  com- 
prised within  the  limits  of  political  consciousness. 
Everywhere  we  encounter  the  same  feature,  namely, 
the  theory  of  States  and  peoples,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  of  the  classes,  parties,  and  individuals  comprising 
them,  on  the  other,  considered  in  all  that  pertains  to 
the  evolution  of  society,  as  moved  and  governed  by 
one  motive,  namely,  to  serve  their  own  ends  according 
to  their  lights  in  the  present  time. 

If  we  confine  our  attention  at  the  outset  to  that 
modern  movement  of  thought  in  which  the  endeavour 
has  been  made  to  formulate  the  principles  behind 
the  phenomena  of  Western  democracy,  we  have  this 
feature  presented  in  a  striking  light.  What  we  see 
at  once  is  that  nearly  all  the  current  theories  of  de- 
mocracy resemble  each  other  in  one  respect.  The 
idea  of  the  nature  of  the  modern  state,  the  concep- 


72  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

tions  underlying  the  practice  of  universal  suffrage, 
the  ideal  of  the  end  of  government  in  the  greatest 
good  of  the  greatest  number,  are  all,  we  perceive, 
tacitly  accepted  as  proceeding  from  the  same  fact, 
namely,  the  conception  of  society  as  comprised  within 
the  limits  enclosing  the  interests  of  the  existing 
individuals.  The  outlook  in  nearly  all  the  accepted 
philosophy  of  society  to  which  modern  democracy 
has  given  rise  closes  down,  therefore,  along  a  clearly 
defined  line,  namely,  that  which  marks  the  horizon 
bounding  the  interests  included  within  the  limits  of 
political  consciousness. 

Yet  if  the  principle  of  Projected  Efficiency  be 
taken  as  applying  to  human  society,  the  first  and 
clearest  conviction  with  which  the  evolutionist  must 
set  out,  is  that  in  every  system  of  social  order  des- 
tined to  maintain  its  place  in  the  stress  of  the  world, 
there  must  exist  a  deep-seated  line  of  demarcation 
completely  separating  the  interests  of  the  "  State," 
considered  as  an  organisation  of  existing  individuals, 
from  those  of  "  Society  "  in  process  of  evolution,  con- 
sidered as  an  aggregate  of  individuals  in  whose  wel- 
fare these  existing  individuals  have  simply  not  the 
slightest  interest.  Nay  more,  the  first  and  central 
principle  of  the  continued  existence  of  such  a  sys- 
tem of  social  order,  in  the  stress  of  evolution,  must 
of  necessity  be  that  conduct  contributing  to  the 
welfare  of  "  Society"  in  this  second  sense  —  however 
onerous  it  may  be  to  existing  individuals  —  must  in 
the  end  everywhere,  and  in  all  things,  control  and 
overrule  conduct  contributing  merely  to  the  welfare 
of  the  "State"  in  this  first  sense.  The  science  of 
social  progress  must,  in  short,  be  the  science  of  the 


ill  THE  POSITION  IN  MODERN  THOUGHT  73 

principles  by  which  this  subordination  is  effected. 
The  history  of  such  a  type  of  social  order  must  be, 
over  and  above  everything  else,  the  history  of  the  phe- 
nomena accompanying  this  process  of  subordination. 

Nevertheless,  when  we  proceed  to  scrutinise  the 
theory  of  democracy  as  it  has  been  presented  in  the 
intellectual  movement  which  extends  from  concep- 
tions of  the  French  Revolution  at  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  down  to  the  current  formulas  of 
social  democracy  in  Germany,  the  nature  of  the  re- 
markable spectacle  we  have  in  view  in  Western  his- 
tory cannot  be  mistaken.  The  fundamental  idea 
involved  in  the  theory  may,  we  see,  be  nearly  always 
expressed  in  a  single  sentence.  It  is  the  theory  of 
the  "  State  "  efficiently  organised  towards  the  inter- 
ests of  its  members,  which  includes  the  whole  con- 
ception of  the  science  and  philosophy  of  society.  The 
keynote  to  the  prevailing  theory  of  social  progress 
is  that  the  interest  of  the  state  and  the  interest  of 
society  tend  to  become  one  and  the  same ;  that  the 
ruling  factor  in  history  is  therefore  the  economic  fac- 
tor ;  and  that  the  tendency  of  all  modern  social  prog- 
ress is,  therefore,  to  render,  as  it  were,  the  spheres  of 
the  moralist  and  of  the  legislator  identical. 

If  there  is  any  one  who  feels  at  first  sight  inclined 
to  think  that  this  may  be  an  over-statement,  he  has 
only  to  look  back  over  the  history  of  the  phase  of 
thought  which  has  sought  to  identify  itself  with 
the  democratic  movement  in  the  modern  period  in 
Western  history,  to  speedily  convince  himself  to  the 
contrary. 

As  we  watch  the  statement  of  the  principles  of 
individual  and  of  social  conduct,  as  they  begin  to  be 


74  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

put  forward  on  the  eve  of  the  French  Revolution 
in  the  writings  of  Condillac,  Helve"tius,  Diderot, 
D'Alembert,  and  others,  we  may  distinguish  how 
Western  thought  had  at  this  point  already  begun 
to  revolve  round  a  fixed  idea.  In  politics  the  phase 
under  which  the  ruling  conception  tends  to  express 
itself  is  unmistakable.  The  conception  of  the  State, 
efficiently  organised  to  serve  the  ends  of  its  existing 
members,  is  the  pivot  upon  which  every  principle 
of  political  and  social  science  is  made  to  turn. 
"  Society  "  is,  as  we  see,  conceived  from  the  outset 
of  the  movement  as  consisting  of  the  existing  citi- 
zens organised  towards  their  own  benefit.  The 
"  good  of  society  "  and  the  interests  of  the  existing 
citizens  are  everywhere  regarded  as  identical  or 
interconvertible  terms.  And  the  content  of  the 
welfare  of  society  is  always  conceived  and  spoken  of 
as  if  it  was  of  necessity  included  in  the  view  which 
these  citizens  took  of  their  own  interests. 

From  this  point  forward,  throughout  all  the  litera- 
ture of  the  Revolution,  we  see  the  developmental 
process  in  Western  history  presented  as  a  process  in 
which  the  "  will  of  the  sovereign  people  "  is  tending 
to  progressively  realise  itself,  simply  in  the  interests 
of  the  people  as  organised  in  the  State.  In  the  ideals 
of  Rousseau,  as  in  the  later  conceptions  of  Marx,  it  is 
the  theory  of  the  interests  of  the  people  collectively 
organised  in  the  State  which  constitutes  the  science 
of  society.  In  the  theory  of  social  development 
towards  which  we  are  carried,  it  is,  therefore,  the 
economic  factor,  i.e.  the  interest  of  the  existing 
individuals,  which  is  everywhere  presented  to  us  as 
the  ruling  factor  in  human  history.  And  in  the 


in  THE   POSITION   IN   MODERN  THOUGHT  75 

theory  of  conduct  which  we  see  taking  shape  side 
by  side  with  this  view,  the  science  of  morality,  just 
as  we  encounter  it  later  in  the  theories  of  James 
Mill1  and  in  the  conceptions  of  current  social  de- 
mocracy in  Germany,  becomes,  in  consequence,  simply 
the  science  of  the  interests  of  the  individuals  in  the 
well-ordered  State.  "  La  science  de  la  morale,"  in 
the  words  of  Helve"tius,  "n'est  autre  chose  que  la 
science  meme  de  la  legislation."2 

As  we  follow  the  history  of  this  self-centred  move- 
ment in  Western  thought,  as  it  tends  to  more  and 
more  closely  associate  itself  with  the  modern  theory 
of  democracy,  it  is  the  same  spectacle  which  contin- 
ues to  be  presented  to  view.  The  science  of  human 
society  must  be,  as  the  evolutionist  sees  it,  the  science 
of  the  principles  through  which  the  whole  visible 
world  around  us  is  being  subordinated  to  the  ends  of 
a  process  in  which  the  interests  of  the  individual 
and  of  the  present  alike  form  a  scarcely  perceptible 
link.  Yet  nowhere  in  the  movement  before  us,  as 
we  watch  it  gradually  expanding  now  into  the  main 
stream  of  Western  thought,  is  there  to  be  discovered 
any  statement  whatever  of  the  principles  of  society 
as  conceived  in  such  a  sense. 

In  England  the  history  of  the  great  intellectual 
movement,  in  which  the  principles  of  modern  de- 
mocracy have  been  developed  into  something  like  the 
form  in  which  they  have  come  down  to  the  current 
generation,  may  be  said  to  have  begun  with  Adam 
Smith's  Wealth  of  Nations.  As  the  evolutionist 

1  Cf.  Analysis  of  the  Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mind,  by  James 
Mill,  ch.  xxiii.  vol.  ii.  ;  and  Fragment  on  Mackintosh,  by  the  same 
author.  *  De  F  Esprit,  ii.  17,  C.  H.  Helv<5tius. 


76  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

takes  his  way  through  this  work  at  the  present  day, 
its  main  idea  and  purpose  are  clearly  to  be  dis- 
tinguished by  him.  The  conceptions  of  the  book 
represent,  in  reality,  as  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  has  re- 
cently pointed  out,1  only  the  spirit  of  business,  and 
the  revolt  of  men  who  were  at  the  time  building  up 
a  vast  industrial  system  against  the  fetters  hitherto 
imposed  on  them  by  traditional  legislation.  We 
have  before  us,  as  it  were,  the  characteristic  protest 
of  the  interests  in  the  present  against  the  rule  of  the 
past.  Yet  we  see  the  principles  of  the  purely 
business  State,  as  therein  set  forth,  beginning,  from 
this  point  forward,  to  be  received  in  England  by 
a  school  of  writers  of  altogether  exceptional  pres- 
tige and  authority,  as  if  they  constituted  the  whole 
science  of  society.  Under  the  influence  of  Bentham, 
Austin,  James  Mill,  Malthus,  Ricardo,  Grote,  and 
John  Stuart  Mill,  we  see  Adam  Smith's  ideas  being 
gradually  expanded  into  a  complete  and  self-contained 
system  of  social  philosophy  more  and  more  closely 
identifying  itself  with  the  theory  of  modern  de- 
mocracy. Through  every  part  of  this  system  there 
runs,  we  see,  the  influence  of  a  single  dominant 
conception,  namely,  that  the  "  State  "  and  "  Society  " 
are  one  and  the  same,  and,  therefore,  that  the  science 
of  the  State  is  the  science  of  human  evolution. 

Any  inquirer  who  wishes  to  follow  for  himself  the 
history  of  this  remarkable  development  in  Western 
history  finds  all  its  stages  clearly  marked  before  him 
in  the  literature  of  English  thought  during  the  nine- 
teenth century.  As  we  take  down  the  volumes  of 
Bentham,  whose  influence  in  England  in  the  middle 

1  The  English  Utilitarians,  vol.  i.  p.  307. 


in  THE   POSITION  IN  MODERN  THOUGHT  77 

decades  of  that  century  pervaded  the  entire  domain 
of  political  theory,  and  to  a  considerable  extent  that 
of  moral  science,  the  characteristic  features  which 
have  been  here  emphasised  meet  us  at  every  step. 
The  conception  that  the  theory  of  the  State  em- 
braces the  theory  of  society  as  a  whole  has  become 
absolute.  That  well-ordered  conduct  in  the  individ- 
ual is  a  mere  matter  of  "felicific  calculus,"  and  that 
the  ends  of  human  morality  are  synonymous  with  the 
enlightened  self-interest  of  the  individual  in  the  State, 
are  the  ideas  which  meet  us  at  every  turn.  "The 
interest  of  the  community  is,"  says  Bentham,  "the 
sum  of  the  interests  of  the  several  members  who 
compose  it."1  The  science  of  the  interest  of  so- 
ciety is  to  him  the  science  of  the  interest  of  the 
members  whom  he  sees  around  him  in  the  State. 
That  there  was  any  principle  of  antagonism  between 
all  such  interests  and  the  interests  of  society  in  pro- 
cess of  evolution  ;  that  all  the  interests  visible  around 
us  could  only  be  scientifically  stated  in  relation  to 
society  in  terms  of  the  subordination  of  these  inter- 
ests to  the  ends  of  a  process  the  meaning  of  which 
entirely  transcended  them,  there  is  not  the  slightest 
trace.2  On  the  contrary,  any  theory  whatever  of  the 
subordination  of  "  interest "  to  "duty"  seemed  to 
Bentham  not  only  meaningless  but  absurd.  Rather, 
in  his  opinion,  "to  interest  duty  must  and  will 
be  made  subservient."3  For  where  both  were  con- 
sidered in  their  broad  sense,  it  was  Bentham's  asser- 
tion that  "  the  sacrifice  of  interest  to  duty  is  neither 

1  An    Introduction   to  the   Principles   of  Morals    and  Legislation 
(Clarendon  Press  ed.),  p.  3. 

2  Cf.  Ibid,  chaps,  i.-xi.  *  Deontology,  vol.  i.  pp.  10,  u. 


78  WESTERN   CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

practicable  nor  so  much  as  desirable ;  that  it  cannot 
in  fact  have  place  ;  and  that  if  it  could,  the  happiness 
of  mankind  would  not  be  promoted  by  it." 1  To 
Bentham,  in  short,  the  identification  of  social  utility 
with  the  self-interest  of  the  individual  had  become 
the  fundamental  principle  of  the  science  of  society. 
To  use  his  own  words :  "  If  every  man,  acting  cor- 
rectly for  his  own  interest,  obtained  the  maximum  of 
obtainable  happiness,  mankind  would  reach  the  mil- 
lennium of  accessible  bliss  ;  and  the  end  of  morality 
—  the  general  happiness  —  be  accomplished."2 

As  we  watch  the  conceptions  of  this  school  of 
thought  being  gradually  developed  in  England  in  the 
writings  of  James  Mill  and  others  ; 3  as  we  see  Adam 
Smith's  doctrine  of  the  individual  following  his  own 
interests,  and  thereby  unintentionally  attaining  the 
highest  social  good,  becoming  the  basis  of  a  self-con- 
tained theory  of  utilitarian  morality  ;  as  we  see  the 
complete  circle  of  ideas  moving  at  last,  in  the  system 
of  social  philosophy  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  towards  the 
full  sovereignty  of  an  accepted  theory  of  modern  so- 
ciety :  the  altogether  remarkable  nature  of  the  spec- 
tacle we  are  regarding  cannot  fail  to  deeply  impress 
the  mind.  No  system  of  opinion  in  recent  times  in 
England  has  so  profoundly  influenced  the  intellectual 
centres  of  Liberalism  as  that  of  the  school  of  thought 
which  culminates  in  the  writings  of  John  Stuart  Mill. 

1  Deontology,  supra.  2  Op.  cit.  p.  12. 

8  See  chaps,  xxi.-xxv.  vol.  ii.,  in  James  Mill's  Analysis  of  the  Phenom- 
ena of  the  Human  Mind,  and  Bentham's  Principles  of  Morals  and 
Legislation,  c.  ii.  and  c.  x.  The  origin  of  morality  in  utility,  requiring 
no  "  moral  sense  "  to  discern  it,  and  operating  through  sympathy  and 
the  association  of  ideas,  has  been  a  characteristic  ethical  doctrine  of 
the  utilitarian  school. 


Ill  THE   POSITION   IN   MODERN  THOUGHT  79 

No  theory  of  society  has  been,  in  its  time,  so  gen- 
erally accepted  in  English  thought  as  a  presentation 
of  the  modern  democratic  position.  Mill's  system  of 
ideas,  as  a  consistent  whole,  has  been  a  leading  cause 
which  has  determined,  down  even  to  the  present  day 
in  England,  the  attitude  on  social  questions  of  nearly 
all  the  representatives  of  the  older  Liberalism.1 

Yet  as  the  evolutionist  follows  the  ideas  developed 
by  J.  S.  Mill,  their  controlling  meaning  is  unmistak- 
able. As  we  turn  over  the  pages  of  his  System  of 
Logic  and  of  his  essay  On  Liberty,  as  we  read  the 
chapter  in  the  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  "  Of 
the  stationary  State,"  or  follow  him  through  the  theory 
of  conduct  set  forth  in  Utilitarianism,  the  ultimate 
meaning  of  it  all  is  plainly  before  us.  The  funda- 
mental conception  which  rules  all  Mill's  ideas  is,  we 
see,  that  the  science  of  the  "State"  constitutes  the 
whole  science  of  society.  "  Society,"  as  Mill  con- 
ceived it,  is  practically  comprised  of  the  individuals 
capable  at  any  particular  moment  of  exercising  the 
rights  of  universal  suffrage.  The  ideal  of  the  high- 
est social  good  is  continually  presented  to  us  as  one 
and  the  same  thing  as  that  of  the  highest  good  of 
these  individuals.  The  main  duty  of  the  individual, 
as  Mill  sees  it,  is,  therefore,  so  to  influence  the 
tendencies  of  development  and  the  provisions  of 
government  that  this  ideal  should  be  reached  in 
practice.  The  end  of  human  effort,  and  the  ideal 
in  all  theories  of  human  conduct,  is,  in  short,  to  bring 
about  a  state  in  which  the  conciliation  between  the 
self-interest  of  the  individual  and  of  society  as  a  whole 

1  Cf.  Principles  of  Economics,  by  Alfred  Marshall,  vol.  i.  p.  65;  also 
The  /''.nglish  Utilitarians,  by  Leslie  Stephen,  vol.  iii.  c.  iii.  p.  2. 


80  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

should  be  completely  attained  ;  and  in  which,  there- 
fore, to  use  Mill's  words,  "  laws  and  social  arrange- 
ments should  place  the  interests  of  every  individual 
as  nearly  as  possible  in  harmony  with  the  interests  of 
the  whole."1 

As  the  evolutionist,  with  the  conception  in  his 
mind  of  human  society  as  involved  in  the  sweep  of 
an  antinomy,  in  which  he  sees  all  the  tendencies  of 
human  development  tending  to  be  more  and  more 
directly  governed  by  the  meaning  of  a  process  in 
which  the  present  is  being  subordinated  to  the  future, 
rises  from  the  study  of  Mill's  writings,  the  super- 
ficiality of  the  whole  system  of  ideas  represented  pro- 
foundly impresses  his  mind.  It  is,  he  sees,  as  if  the 
world  represented  in  the  era  in  which  we  are  living  had 
never  existed ;  as  if  we  were  transported  back  again 
into  the  theories  of  society  of  the  ancient  civilisations, 
into  the  political  conceptions  of  Plato  and  Aristotle. 

That  such  a  system  of  ideas  should  really  express 
the  meaning  of  our  civilisation,  or  of  our  social  prog- 
ress as  a  whole,  must  be,  he  perceives,  inherently 
impossible.  For  if  the  nature  of  the  evolutionary 
process  be  not  altogether  misunderstood,  if  the  prin- 
ciple of  Projected  Efficiency  as  applied  to  the  evolu- 
tion of  human  society  be  not  entirely  without  meaning, 
the  phenomenon  of  social  progress  as  represented  in 
human  history  must,  he  sees,  have  a  meaning  which 
altogether  transcends  the  content  of  these  concep- 
tions. The  process  of  development  which  our  civ- 
ilisation represents  must  be  subject  to  laws  more 
far-reaching  than  any  which  could  be  compressed 
within  the  narrow  formulae  of  such  a  theory  of  society. 

1  Utilitarianism,  by  J.  S.  Mill,  p.  25. 


ill  THE  POSITION  EN  MODERN  THOUGHT  8 1 

The  very  essence  of  the  process  of  order  represented 
in  our  Western  world  must  be  that  there  is  within  it 
some  organic  principle  effecting  the  continued  subor- 
dination and  sacrifice,  not  only  of  individuals  and  of 
parties,  but  of  whole  generations  and  of  entire  periods 
of  time  to  the  ends  of  a  larger  process  of  life. 

But  neither  in  the  philosophy  of  human  history  as 
a  whole,  nor  in  the  theory  of  Western  progress  in 
particular,  as  presented  in  the  writings  of  the  school 
of  thought  here  seeking  to  give  us  a  theory  of  the 
principles  of  modern  democracy,  is  any  such  concep- 
tion of  development  to  be  distinguished.  Mill's 
theory  of  social  progress  is  always,  as  we  see  it, 
simply  a  theory  of  progress  towards  a  fixed  state  in 
which  a  conciliation  between  the  self-interest  of  the 
individual  in  the  present  and  the  interest  of  society 
is  to  be  completed.  His  theory  of  human  conduct 
and  ethics  is,  therefore,  a  theory  of  a  future  social 
condition  so  ordered  that  virtue  is  to  be  a  matter 
simply  of  pursuing  self-interest  in  an  enlightened 
manner,  and  vice,  in  Bentham's  terms,  a  kind  of  false 
moral  arithmetic,  a  mere  "  miscalculation  of  chances 
in  estimating  the  value  of  pleasures  and  pains."  1  In 
the  region  of  ethics,  as  in  the  domain  of  political 
philosophy,  the  ideal  with  which  Mill  sought  to  asso- 
ciate the  principles  of  Western  Liberalism  is,  we  see, 
simply  a  fixed  condition  of  society  in  which,  to  use 
Bentham's  terms,  there  would  be  given  to  the  social, 
nothing  less  and  nothing  more  than  the  meaning  and 
the  influence  of  the  self-regarding  motive.2 

We  see,  in  short,  everywhere  the  principles  of  the 
utilitarian  State  conceived  as  if  they  embraced  the 

1  Deontology,  vol.  i.  p.  131.  a  Ibid.  p.  23. 

G 


82  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

whole  theory  of  society  in  process  of  evolution.1 
Nothing  can  be  more  remarkable  than  the  absolute 
unconsciousness  displayed  by  Mill  of  the  profound 
difference — affecting,  as  we  now  see,  every  principle 
of  social  science — which  exists  between  the  "State," 
considered  as  a  piece  of  social  mechanism  directed  to 
further  the  utilitarian  ends  of  its  existing  members, 
and  "  Society  "  considered  as  a  living  organism,  and 
undergoing,  under  the  influence  of  Natural  Selection, 
a  vast  process  of  slow  development  in  which  all  the 
interests  of  the  existing  individuals  are  lost  sight  of 
in  wider  issues.  A  discussion  like  that  in  book  iv.  of 
the  Principles  of  Political  Economy  —  in  which  Mill 
objects  to  the  trampling,  crushing,  and  elbowing  of 
the  modern  industrial  world  because  of  their  unpleas- 
antness to  the  individual ;  in  which  the  stationary 
social  state  2  is  regarded  as  desirable  and  normal ;  in 
which  the  limitation  of  population  by  prudential 
restraints,  dictated  by  the  "enlightened  selfishness" 
of  the  individual,  is  set  up  as  a  social  ideal  —  already 
belongs  simply  to  the  literature  of  a  pre-scientific 
epoch  when  men  possessed  as  yet  no  real  insight  into 
the  character  of  the  natural  forces  at  work  in  the 
evolution  of  society. 

Remarkable  in  every  particular  must  appear  to 
the  mind  of  the  evolutionist  the  position  which  has 
just  been  described.  Yet  we  cannot  fully  understand 
how  completely  the  tendencies  of  Western  thought 
have  been  controlled  down  into  the  period  in  which 
we  are  living,  by  the  conceptions  from  which  it  arose, 

1  Compare  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison's  remarks  in  this  respect  in  his 
article  on  Mill  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  No.  235. 

2  Ch.  vi.  bk.  iv.,  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  by  J.  S.  Mill. 


in  THE  POSITION  IN  MODERN  THOUGHT  83 

until  we  proceed  further  to  extend  our  view  and 
carry  it  beyond  the  circle  of  ideas  which  the  school 
of  English  utilitarians  as  a  whole  represents. 

If  we  look  closely  at  the  idea  of  social  progress, 
which  has  held  the  mind  of  our  Western  world 
throughout  the  nineteenth  century,  its  main  charac- 
teristic may  readily  be  distinguished.  In  nearly  all 
the  leading  movements  in  thought  we  may  see 
that  the  principles  of  our  social  progress  have  been 
presented  as  being,  for  the  most  part,  those  of  a 
struggle  between  the  present  and  the  past.  The 
theory  of  social  development  which  we  encounter 
in  Western  thought  and  politics  during  the  nine- 
teenth century  is,  therefore,  a  theory  according  to 
which  existing  interests  are  considered  as  passing 
out  from  under  the  control  of  the  past  towards  an 
organisation  of  society  in  which  the  interests  of  the 
present  are  at  last  to  be  supreme  in  every  particular. 
It  is  this  theory  of  the  ascendency  of  the  present 
in  the  evolutionary  process  —  a  theory  in  which  the 
relations  of  the  present  to  the  future  have  no  place 
—  that  is  represented  in  English  thought  in  the 
movement  which  extends  from  Hume  and  Adam 
Smith  to  John  Stuart  Mill.  It  is  the  distinctive 
theory  of  social  progress  which  has  come  down  from 
the  French  Revolution,  which  continues  to  be  repre- 
sented in  a  multitude  of  forms  in  current  French 
thought,  and  which  in  one  of  its  phases  has  found 
its  most  characteristic  expression  in  the  current 
conceptions  of  social  democracy  in  Germany.  », 

Now,  when  with  this  fact  in  mind  we  turn  in  a 
different  direction  and  follow  that  development  in 
current  thought  which  is  presented  to  us  for  the 


84  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

most  part  in  the  social  philosophy  of  Herbert 
Spencer,  it  is  to  find  that  the  position  with  which 
we  are  confronted  is  even  more  remarkable  than 
that  which  we  have  just  been  considering. 

In  the  Synthetic  Philosophy  of  Herbert  Spencer 
we  have  before  us  an  immense  effort,  practically  ex- 
tending over  the  entire  space  of  the  last  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  to  construct  a  theory  of  human 
society  from  the  avowed  standpoint  that  all  investi- 
gations in  other  fields  of  knowledge  are  merely  pre- 
liminary to  the  definition  of  the  principles  underlying 
the  process  of  our  social  development.  But  when  the 
observer,  who  has  in  some  measure  caught  sight  of 
the  significance  of  the  position  here  defined,  has 
slowly  and  patiently  endeavoured  to  get  to  the  heart  of 
the  Synthetic  Philosophy,  he  will  probably  rise  at  last 
from  the  study  of  Mr.  Spencer's  writings  with  the 
feeling  which  has  hitherto  filled  his  mind  deepened 
and  intensified  in  every  respect. 

Mr.  Spencer's  first  important  work,  Social  Statics, 
was  published  in  1851,  some  eight  years  before  Dar- 
win's Origin  of  Species,  and  the  development  of  his 
system  of  social  philosophy  extends  over  the  succeed- 
ing half  century.  Despite  the  reverence  due  to  the 
author  for  the  great  services  he  has  rendered  to 
knowledge  in  familiarising  the  general  mind  with  the 
idea  of  development  as  applied  to  the  world  around  us, 
and  to  the  history  of  society  in  particular,  no  student 
of  social  philosophy  who  has  once  perceived  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  later  developments  of  the  Darwinian 
law  of  Natural  Selection  can  let  this  fact  now  hide 
from  him,  after  he  has  steeped  his  mind  in  Mr. 
Spencer's  writings,  the  bearing  of  one  leading  fact 


in  THE  POSITION  IN  MODERN  THOUGHT  85 

which  will  probably  possess  his  mind  concerning  the 
Synthetic  Philosophy.  Mr.  Spencer's  work,  as  a  con- 
ception of  social  progress,  is,  he  will  see,  in  all  its 
essential  features  a  presentation  of  the  theory  of 
society  which  prevailed  in  the  early  decades  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  This  theory  has  been  set  out 
under  the  phraseology  of  modern  evolutionary  science ; 
but  it  remains,  this  fact  notwithstanding,  in  all  its 
characteristic  features,  practically  the  same  conception 
of  society  as  that  developed  by  the  school  of  thought 
which  culminated  in  England  in  the  writings  of  John 
Stuart  Mill.1 

1  It  has  been  a  fact  tending,  beyond  doubt,  to  greatly  retard  the  ap- 
plication of  Darwin's  theories  to  the  science  of  society  in  England  that, 
apart  from  Darwin's  own  writings,  the  principal  medium  through  which 
the  evolutionary  view  has  in  the  past  been  made  to  impinge  upon  the 
general  attention  has  been  the  philosophy  of  Mr.  Spencer  and  the  dis-  * 
courses  and  addresses  of  the  late  Professor  Huxley.  For  no  close 
student  can  fail  to  see  that  both  writers  belong  essentially  to  the  pre- 
Darwinian  period  of  knowledge.  It  has  not  been  possible  for  Mr. 
Spencer  to  deal  with  the  Darwinian  hypothesis  in  its  later  and  more 
fundamental  applications  without  recasting  a  great  part  of  his  earlier 
work,  to  the  conclusions  in  which  these  later  developments  run  counter. 
As  regards  Huxley,  an  interesting  and  significant  fact  bearing  in  the 
same  direction  has  recently  come  to  notice  on  the  publication  of  his 
memoirs.  It  is,  that,  three  years  before  the  publication  of  Darwin's 
Origin  of  Species,  Huxley  delivered  a  discourse  at  the  Royal  Institution 
in  London  in  which  the  main  conception  upon  which  the  Darwinian 
hypothesis  was  afterwards  made  to  rest,  was  not  only  opposed,  but 
treated  as  inherently  absurd.  Huxley's  words  were  as  follows :  "  Re- 
gard a  case  of  birds,  or  of  butterflies,  or  examine  the  shell  of  an  echinus, 
or  a  group  of  foraminifera,  sifted  out  of  the  first  handful  of  sea-sand.  Is 
it  to  be  supposed  for  a  moment  that  the  beauty  of  outline  and  colour  of 
the  first,  the  geometrical  regularity  of  the  second,  or  the  extreme  variety 
and  elegance  of  the  third  are  any  good  to  the  animals?  that  they  perform 
any  of  the  actions  of  their  lives  more  easily  and  better  for  being  bright  and 
graceful  rather  than  if  they  were  dull  and  plain?  So,  to  go  deeper,  is  it 
conceivable  that  the  harmonious  variation  of  a  common  plan  which  we 


86  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  in  the  mind  of  the  student 
as  to  this  fact.  As  we  follow  Mr.  Spencer  through 
the  successive  stages  of  his  theory  of  social  develop- 
ment, we  see  how  he  conceives  human  progress  to  be 
controlled  in  all  its  features  by  one  fact,  namely,  the 
relation  of  the  past  to  the  present  in  a  struggle  in 
which  the  interests  in  the  present  are  becoming  the 
ascendant  factor  in  our  social  evolution.  Of  that 
deeper  conception  of  human  progress  as  an  integrat- 
ing social  process,  of  which  all  the  principles  are  in 
the  last  resort  controlled  by  the  fact  that  the  present 
is  in  reality  not  so  much  related  to  the  past  as  pass- 
ing out  under  the  control  of  the  future,  there  is  to  be 
distinguished  no  real  perception  in  Mr.  Spencer's 
writings. 

find  everywhere  in  Nature  serves  any  utilitarian  purpose?  that  the  in- 
numerable varieties  of  antelopes,  of  frogs,  of  clupeoid  fishes,  of  beetles 
and  bivalve  mollusks,  of  polyzoa,  of  actinozoa,  and  hydrozoa,  are  adapta- 
tions to  as  many  different  kinds  of  life,  and  consequently  varying  physi- 
ological necessities?  Such  a  supposition  in  regard  to  the  three  last,  at 
any  rate,  would  be  absurd.  ...  If  we  turn  to  the  vegetable  world  we 
find  it  one  vast  illustration  of  the  same  truth.  Who  has  ever  dreamed 
of  finding  an  utilitarian  purpose  in  the  forms  and  colours  of  flowers,  in 
the  sculpture  of  pollen-grains,  in  the  varied  figures  of  the  frond  of  the 
ferns?  What  '  purpose '  is  served  by  the  strange  numerical  relations  of 
the  parts  of  plants,  the  threes  and  fives  of  monocotyledons  and  dicoty- 
ledons?" {The  Scientific  Memoirs  of  T.  H.  Huxley,  vol.  i.  p.  311.) 
This  passage  is  very  remarkable,  as  showing  how  absolutely  foreign  to 
Huxley's  mind  at  this  period  —  he  had  already  established  his  reputa- 
tion—  was  the  very  principle  which  was  about  to  become  the  central 
conception  of  the  Darwinian  hypothesis.  It  tends  to  explain  in  some 
measure  that  fact  of  Huxley's  subsequent  failure  to  apply  the  evolution- 
ary hypothesis  with  any  measure  of  success  in  the  explanation  of  the 
phenomena  of  human  society,  which  was  in  evidence  in  his  Romanes 
Lecture  in  1893,  in  tne  conception  therein  discussed  of  the  cosmic  pro- 
cess -versus  the  ethical  process  (cf.  Evolution  and  Ethics,  by  T.  H. 
Huxley). 


in  THE  POSITION  IN  MODERN  THOUGHT  87 

We  encounter  the  expression  of  this  fact  every- 
where from  the  outset.  If  we  take  up  the  advance  to 
the  study  of  the  science  of  society  in  Mr.  Spencer's 
writings  with  the  Principles  of  Psychology,  the  appli- 
cation of  the  conception  to  which  we  are  there  carried 
forward  is,  we  see,  merely  the  application  of  the  old- 
world  conception  of  Condorcet,  Cousin,  and  Quinet, 
according  to  which  the  theory  of  sociological  princi- 
ples is  to  be  deduced  from  the  introspective  study  of 
the  individual  mind.  Of  that  transforming  truth  to 
which  all  the  principles  of  psychology  will  be  seen  to  be 
related  in  the  future,  namely,  that  the  study  of  the  in- 
dividual mind  must  be  itself  approached  from  the  stand- 
point of  sociological  principles  ;  and  that  the  content 
of  the  human  mind  is,  therefore,  ultimately  governed 
by  its  relations  to  a  sociological  process,  the  control- 
ling meaning  of  which  is  not  in  the  past,  but  in  the 
future,  there  is  no  discernment  visible  in  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's theories. 

We  see  how  the  significance  of  the  principle  under- 
lying this  fact  meets  us  at  every  point  in  Mr.  Spencer's 
theories.  For  instance,  to  have  once  grasped  the  na- 
ture of  the  position  to  which  the  biological  sciences 
have  advanced  in  our  time,  in  bringing  us  to  see  the 
process  of  human  development  as  a  history  of  the  pro- 
gressive subordination  of  the  present  and  the  individ- 
ual to  the  future  and  the  infinite,  is  to  perceive  that 
the  history  of  human  evolution  must  present  itself  to 
science  in  the  future  as  being  primarily  the  history  of 
the  evolution  in  the  human  mind  of  the  sanction  for 
sacrifice.  But  as  we  see  Mr.  Spencer  struggling  with 
the  stupendous  class  of  phenomena  to  which  this 
principle  has  already  given  rise  in  the  human  mind, 


88  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

and  seeking  to  associate  its  meaning  simply  with  the 
past  history  of  the  race,  we  have  in  sight  a  noteworthy 
spectacle.  His  explanation  of  the  idea  of  sacrifice 
that  projects  itself  with  increasing  insistence  through 
all  the  creeds  of  humanity,  becomes,  accordingly,  little 
more  than  a  suggestion  that  it  is  to  be  accounted  for 
as  a  survival  from  cannibal  ancestors  who  delighted 
in  witnessing  tortures.1  The  extraordinary  triviality 
and  superficiality  of  the  conception  underlying  such  a 
theory  is  immediately  obvious  to  any  mind  which  has 
once  caught  sight  of  the  meaning  of  the  evolutionary 
process  in  human  society  as  we  are  now  beginning  to 
understand  it.  Yet  we  see  that  Mr.  Spencer's  conclu- 
sion here  is  but  the  expression  of  the  fundamental 
idea  which  runs  through  all  his  system  of  theory.  It 
is  but  the  same  conception  of  the  relations  of  the 
present  merely  to  the  past  that  we  have  in  his  theory 
of  the  origin  of  religions  from  ancestor  worship  and  a 
belief  in  ghosts.2  It  is  still  the  same  conception 
which  runs  through  his  theory  of  Ecclesiastical  Insti- 
tutions, in  which  all  the  comparatively  insignificant 
influences  which  he  attributes  to  this  class  of  phe- 
nomena, are,  so  far  as  they  have  any  scientific  mean- 
ing at  all,  made  to  revolve  round  one  principle,  namely, 
their  influence  in  tending  to  establish  the  authority 
of  the  past  over  the  present.3  Their  relation  to  that 
deeper  principle  of  human  evolution,  the  subordination 
of  the  present  to  the  future,  does  not  come  within  the 
purview  of  Mr.  Spencer's  mind. 

But  it  is  as  we  watch  Mr.  Spencer  developing  his 
principles  into  a  theory  of  human  society  as  we  see  it 

1  Data  of  Ethics,  chap.  viii.      2  Principles  of  Sociology,  §§  60-210. 
« Ibid.  §§  622-627. 


in  THE  POSITION  IN  MODERN  THOUGHT  89 

around  us  in  the  modern  world,  that  we  realise  to  the 
full  how  essentially  that  theory,  in  all  the  leading 
features  we  have  been  considering,  corresponds  to  the 
theory  of  social  development  of  the  earlier  school  of 
English  Utilitarianism.  In  his  Political  Institutions 
it  is  only  the  theory  of  the  emancipation  of  the 
present  from  the  past  that  we  have  always  in  view. 
The  characteristic  principle  of  the  social  process  in 
recent  Western  history,  as  Mr.  Spencer  enunciates  it, 
is  practically  the  same  as  the  Mills  conceived  it  to 
be.  Our  social  evolution,  that  is  to  say,  is  regarded, 
in  effect,  as  a  struggle  between  the  interests  of  the 
present  and  the  rule  of  the  past.1  The  theory  of 
social  progress,  accordingly,  becomes  the  theory  of 
progress  towards  a  social  state  in  which  the  ascen- 
dency of  the  present  in  the  evolutionary  process  is  to 
be  at  last  complete.  And  the  ideal  towards  which  it 
is  taken  that  political  effort  should  be  directed  is, 
therefore,  the  same  as  J.  S.  Mill  held  before  the 
minds  of  English  Liberalism  in  the  middle  decades  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  namely,  a  fixed  social  state 
in  which  the  interest  of  the  individual  and  of  society 
hitherto  at  variance,  shall  at  last  become  one  and 
identical  in  an  era  of  the  complete  ascendency  of 
the  present.2 

As  we  follow  Mr.  Spencer  through  the  Principles 
of  Ethics  we  have  all  the  culminating  phases  of  this 
conception  clearly  in  sight.  In  his  view  of  political 
society,  as  in  his  theory  of  conduct,  we  see  Mr. 
Spencer,  like  the  old  French  Encyclopaedists,  con- 
templating the  progress  of  the  world  towards  an  ideal 

1  Cf.  Principles  of  Sociology,  §§  434-581. 
2Cf.  Principles  of  Ethics,  §§  48-55. 


90  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

where,  to  use  his  own  words,  he  beholds  a  "  concilia- 
tion taking  place  between  the  interest  of  each  citizen 
and  the  interests  of  citizens  at  large  —  tending  ever 
towards  a  state  in  which  the  two  become  merged 
into  one,  and  in  which  the  feelings  answering  to 
them  respectively  fall  into  complete  concord." 1 
Like  John  Stuart  Mill,  that  is  to  say,  he  is  regarding 
our  social  progress  as  progress  towards  a  future 
social  state  in  which  the  interests  of  every  individual 
shall  be  at  last  completely  harmonised  with  the 
interests  of  the  whole.2  Like  Bentham  he  is,  in 
reality,  in  this  respect  carrying  the  science  of  society 
back  to  the  point  at  which  it  left  the  hand  of  the 
Greek  theorist,  where  the  science  of  "the  associated 
state "  and  the  science  of  the  interests  of  the  indi- 
viduals comprising  it  were  considered  to  be  one  and 
the  same. 

In  the  later  part  of  his  career  Mr.  Spencer  has 
been  anxious  to  refute  the  charge  that  his  principles 
gave  support  to  the  theories  of  society  which  find 
expression  in  German  social  democracy.  Yet  in  this 
respect  his  critics  have  been  quite  consistent.  For, 
as  in  the  case  of  Mill,  we  see  that  he  really  has  in 
view,  like  the  Marxian  socialists,  a  state  of  society  in 
which  the  sphere  of  law,  of  morality,  and  of  economic 
action  are  necessarily  coincident  and  coextensive, 
and  in  which,  in  consequence,  just  as  Marx  imagined, 
the  requirements  of  the  existing  State  must,  in  the 
end,  overrun  every  domain  of  human  activity.  Mr. 
Spencer's  work  represents,  in  other  words,  the 
endeavour  to  represent  our  social  evolution  in  terms 

1  Principles  of  Ethics,  §  92;  see  also  §§  48-55. 
a  Utilitarianism,  p.  25. 


Ill  THE   POSITION  IN   MODERN  THOUGHT  91 

of  the  interests  of  the  individuals  comprised  within 
the  limits  of  political  consciousness.  Of  the  pro- 
found antagonism  involved  between  the  principles 
governing  the  life  and  welfare  of  all  the  individuals 
included  in  these  limits,  and  those  governing  the  life 
and  welfare  of  the  race  in  process  of  evolution  ;  and 
of  the  nature  of  the  phenomena  accompanying  a 
resulting  process  of  stress  and  subordination  infinite 
in  its  reach,  there  is  no  conception  in  his  writings.1 

Deeply  impressed  as  the  mind  may  be  by  the 
position  here  disclosed,  we  must  carry  our  scrutiny 
yet  farther  before  the  position,  towards  which  we 
have  travelled  in  Western  thought,  is  fully  realised. 
It  will  probably  have  occurred  to  many  who  have 
followed  the  argument  here  developed,  that  however 
representative  in  character,  however  wide  in  influence 

1  Answer  may  be  made  here  to  any  disciple  of  Mr.  Spencer  who 
feels  prompted  to  question  this  view  on  the  strength  of  isolated  pas- 
sages in  the  Synthetic  Philosophy,  in  which  it  is  acknowledged  that 
the  interests  of  the  species  or  of  the  organism  must  prevail  over  those  of 
the  individual,  where  the  two  come  into  conflict  (^g-.  Data  of  Ethics, 
pp.  133-134,  and  Principles  of  Ethics,  vol.  ii.  p.  6).  The  principle  in- 
volved here  is  the  subordination  of  the  present  to  the  future  and  the 
universal.  No  close  student  of  Mr.  Spencer  would  be  likely  to  hold 
the  view  that  the  author  had  in  mind  any  real  conception  of  the 
necessarily  inherent  antagonism  involved  between  the  principles  gov- 
erning the  two  classes  of  interests.  On  the  contrary,  Mr.  Spencer  has 
continually  in  view,  in  human  history,  the  progress  of  society  towards 
a  state  in  which  the  interests  of  the  individual  shall  become  harmo- 
nised and  identical  with  those  of  society  (cf.  Data  of  Ethics,  chap.  viii.). 
In  the  result  there  is  to  be  found  in  the  Synthetic  Philosophy  no  con- 
ception of  the  real  meaning  of  the  class  of  phenomena  which  is  ac- 
companying in  human  history  this  progressive  subordination  of  the 
individual  and  the  present  to  the  ends  of  a  process,  the  meaning  of 
which  is,  of  necessity,  always  projected  beyond  the  limits  of  political 
consciousness. 


92  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  views  and  opinions  hitherto  discussed,  they  do 
not  include  the  whole  outlook  in  modern  thought. 
It  may  be  said  that  the  conception  of  the  ascendency 
of  the  present  in  the  social  process  which  we  see 
here  expressing  itself  through  the  views  of  the 
English  Utilitarians  down  to  Mr.  Spencer  ;  which  is 
represented  in  the  literature  of  the  Marxian  move- 
ment in  Germany,  and  in  the  theories  of  the  school 
which  the  writings  of  Professor  Loria  represent  in 
modern  Italy  ;  and  which  we  encounter  in  almost 
every  phase  in  current  French  art,  literature,  and 
philosophy;  —  does  not  characteristically  present  the 
position  to  which  Western  thought  has  advanced. 
When,  however,  we  turn  now  and  carry  our  view 
in  yet  another  direction,  the  results  are  hardly  less 
striking  in  any  particular. 

One  of  the  most  representative  minds  in  recent 
thought  in  that  region  where  we  see  the  theory  of 
the  principles  of  human  conduct  impinging  on  the 
theory  of  social  development  has  been  the  late  Pro- 
fessor Sidgwick.  No  recent  writer  has  perceived 
more  clearly  the  nature  of  the  cardinal  difficulty 
which  underlies  that  conception  of  the  modern  state 
which  the  Manchester  school  in  England  developed 
from  the  principles  of  the  Utilitarians,  namely,  the 
difficulty  inherent  in  the  fact  that  there  is  resident 
in  our  civilisation  an  ethical  principle  which  must 
ultimately  render  the  modern  consciousness  abso- 
lutely intolerant  of  the  fundamental  principles  of 
a  purely  business  conception  of  "society."  1  No 

1  Compare,  for  example,  Political  Economy  and  Ethics,  by  Henry 
Sidgwick,  in  the  article  en  "  Political  Economy  "  in  the  Dictionary  of 
Political  Economy,  voL  iiL 


in  THE  POSITION  IN  MODERN  THOUGHT  93 

mind  in  recent  times,  in  reviewing  the  results 
obtained  in  modern  thought  —  as  it  has  advanced,  on 
the  one  hand,  through  the  conceptions  here  described, 
and,  on  the  other,  through  that  movement  which 
has  developed  in  Germany,  Scotland,  and  England, 
through  Kant  and  Hegel  —  has  seen  more  accurately 
than  Sidgwick's,  the  nature  of  the  fundamental 
contradiction  involved  in  all  attempts  to  rationalise 
within  the  limits  of  political  consciousness  the  concep- 
tions of  "  duty  "  and  "  self-interest "  in  the  individual.1 
And  no  modern  student  of  social  phenomena  has 
arrived  by  more  deliberate  and  cautious  steps  at  a 
position  in  which  that  question  which  underlies  the 
evolutionary  position  presented  itself  to  him  —  the 
question  whether  it  was  not,  after  all,  impossible  to 
construct  a  scientific  theory  of  ethics  within  such 
limits,  and  whether,  therefore,  in  his  own  words, 
"we  were  not  in  the  last  resort  forced  to  borrow  a 
fundamental  and  indispensable  premiss "  from  con- 
ceptions which  transcended  them.2 

But  when  we  proceed  to  follow  Professor  Sidg- 
wick  through  his  writings,  in  which  we  might  expect 
to  find  the  application  of  such  views  to  the  science 
of  society  or  to  a  science  of  the  social  process  in 
history,  we  only  find  that  we  have  once  more  re- 
turned to  the  science  of  the  political  State  presented 
as  the  science  of  society.  It  is  true  that  in  his 
Elements  of  Politics  we  find  a  few  sentences  in 

1  Cf.  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Ethics,  pp.  259-283,  and  Methods  of 
Ethics,  507-508. 

a  The  Methods  of  Ethics,  by  Henry  Sidgwick,  p.  506.  See  also  Pro- 
fessor Mackenzie's  Manual  of  Ethics,  bk.  ii.  chap.  i.  and  chap.  iv.  3d 
ed.,  chap.  ii.  2d  ed. 


94  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

which  the  view  is  advanced  that  the  welfare  of  the 
community  may  be  interpreted  to  mean  the  welfare, 
not  only  of  the  human  beings  who  are  actually 
living,1  but  of  those  who  are  to  live  hereafter.  But, 
after  this,  we  encounter  in  a  book  of  632  pages 
nothing  to  show  that  Professor  Sidgwick  had  attained 
to  any  conception  of  the  relation  of  this  fact  to 
the  science  of  politics  as  a  whole,2  or  to  any  law  or 
principle  of  government,  or  to  any  principle  of  social 
development.  Yet,  if  the  principle  of  Projected  Effi- 
ciency be  taken  as  applying  to  society,  a  fundamental 
fact  of  human  evolution  must  be  that  the  welfare  of 
society  in  this  larger  sense  is  not  coincident  with, 
and  can  never  be  made  coincident  with,  that  of  any 
of  the  classes  or  parties  or  majorities  with  which  we 
see  governments  to  be  concerned.  The  only  aspect 
in  which  the  meaning  of  our  civilisation  as  a  system 
of  social  order,  destined  to  hold  its  place  in  the 
future,  could  be  set  forth  in  a  really  scientific  light 
must,  as  we  perceive,  necessarily  present  us  through- 
out Western  history  with  the  spectacle  of  these 
ruling  classes  or  majorities  moving  and  ordering  the 
world  in  the  endeavour  to  reach  their  own  ends ; 
and  yet  everywhere  encountering  the  effect  of  a  slow 

1  Elements  of  Politics,  by  Henry  Sidgwick,  pp.  34,  35. 

2  We  might,  for  instance,  have  expected  Sidgwick  to  have  seen  the 
meaning  of  the  position  which  lies  behind  that  characteristic  tendency 
of  recent  English  thought  noted  by  Sir  Frederick  Pollock  and  Professor 
Holland  (the  expression,  as  we  shall  see  later,  of  a  deep-seated,  though 
more  or  less  unconscious,  principle  of  our  social  evolution)  which  is 
accomplishing  the  complete  differentiation  of  the  analytical  branch  of 
political  science  from  the  science  of  ethics  as  a  whole  (cf.  Pollock's 
History  of  the  Science  of  Politics,  pp.  113-114,  and  Holland's  Elements 
of  Jurisprudence,  chap.  iii.). 


ill  THE   POSITION   IN   MODERN  THOUGHT  95 

subordinating  process  of  evolution  ever  consistently 
preventing  those  ends  from  being  attained.  But 
we  find  no  presentation  in  Sidgwick's  writings  of 
any  consistent  science  of  society  conceived  in  this 
sense.  It  is  to  the  theory  of  the  political  State  that 
we  always  return  in  the  end.1 

In  modern  Germany,  when  we  regard  the  history 
of  the  movement  which  has  come  down  from  Kant 
through  the  Hegelian  development,  we  have  a  strik- 
ing presentation  of  the  result  of  the  prevailing  ten- 
dency. The  two  extreme  and  opposing  phases  which 
this  movement  may  be  said  to  have  reached  in 
Germany  have  now  one  characteristic  feature  in 
common.  In  the  phase  which  has  reached  its  ex- 
pression in  the  materialistic  interpretation  of  his- 
tory, the  theory  of  the  existing  collective  State  and 
the  ascendency  of  the  interests  of  its  members  is,  as 
a  matter  of  course,  presented  as  the  whole  science 
of  society.  Yet,  in  the  opposing  interpretation  of 
history  to  which  the  Hegelian  development  has 
carried  a  section  of  German  thought,  the  meaning 
of  the  evolutionary  process  in  history  has  come  to 
be  almost  as  closely  associated  with  the  purposes 
and  machinery  of  the  existing  State.  In  it  we  see, 
as  it  were,  the  post-reformation  ideas  of  modern  his- 
tory allied  with  the  conception  of  the  omnipotent 
State  which  Henry  IV.  sought  to  realise  in  the 
Empire  in  mediaeval  Europe.  We  have,  therefore, 
that  striking  spectacle  in  modern  politics,  namely, 
the  dominance  in  all  schools  of  thought  in  the  current 
life  of  Germany  of  the  theory  of  the  omnipotence  of 

1  Compare  Sidgwick's  position  in  this  respect  with  the  development 
to  he  noted,  e.g,  in  Professor  Gidding's  /-.foments  of  Sociology,  chap.  xxiv. 


96  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  State  —  with  the  resulting  identification  of  the 
science  of  the  political  State  with  the  science  of 
society  in  process  of  evolution.  In  the  result,  it 
may  be  said  of  modern  Germany,  as  a  recent  writer 
has  correctly  remarked,  "  that,  notwithstanding  their 
manifold  divergencies,  all  the  leading  political  parties 
are  based  on  substantially  the  same  idea  of  the 
omnipotence  of  the  State.  Here  the  Conservative 
and  the  Social  Democrat  take  the  same  ground, 
whatever  may  be  their  differences  in  regard  to  the 
ways  of  the  manifestation  of  authority  by  the  State 
and  the  regulations  as  to  the  distribution  of  prop- 
erty." ! 

When  the  mind  is  carried  to  the  standpoint  of  the 
socialistic  parties  in  Germany,  who  frankly  adopt  the 
theories  of  Marx,  and  who,  therefore,  openly  accept 
the  materialistic  interpretation  of  history,  we  see  now 
how  the  earlier  theories  of  Bentham  and  the  Mills  in 
England  have  been  carried  at  last  to  their  full  logical 
application.  For  here  the  ascendency  of  the  present, 
and,  therefore,  of  the  economic  factor,  is  no  longer 
simply  an  implied  principle  in  the  historical  process. 
It  has  become  now  the  avowed  end  to  which  every 
tendency  of  current  social  progress  is  necessarily 
made  subservient.  In  this  respect  the  two  phases 
of  modern  thought  represented  by  Marx,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  by  Nietzsche,  on  the  other,  appear  as  the 
complements  of  each  other.  The  principles  of  Marx 
represent,  as  it  were,  only  the  extreme  socialistic 
expression  of  the  views  of  which  Nietzsche  may  be 
said  to  represent  the  extreme  individualistic  inter- 
pretation. For  in  each  case  the  principle  which  is 

1  "  Bismarck,"  by  William  Clarke,  Contemporary  Review,  No.  397. 


in  THE   POSITION   IN   MODERN  THOUGHT  97 

held  before  us  is  the  same,  namely,  the  ascendency 
of  the  present  in  the  social  process  in  history. 

To  Nietzsche,  as  is  well  known,  the  modern  world  is 
merely  a  world  in  which  the  real  masters  and  supe- 
riors have  been  robbed  of  their  rights  —  a  world  in 
which  the  Uebermenschen,  the  natural  ruling  caste, 
have  been  drugged  and  anaesthetised  by  the  senti- 
ments and  beliefs  of  our  civilisation  into  yielding 
their  position  to  a  democracy  of  whom  they  are  the 
natural  superiors,  and  against  whom  they  would 
otherwise  be  immeasurably  the  stronger.1  But  to 
Marx  equally,  in  the  last  analysis,  it  is  might  only 
which  is  right.  The  party  whom  he  champions  is, 
we  see,  justified  in  the  social  process  for  the  same 
reason  as  the  party  which  Nietzsche  represents,  that 
is  to  say,  in  respect  of  its  strength.  For  there  is  in 
Marx's  theories,  as  Mr.  Russell  has  correctly  pointed 
out,  neither  justice,  nor  virtue,  nor  morality2  —  only 
the  blind  growth  of  the  productive  forces  and  the 
resulting  necessity,  as  Marx  conceives  it,  for  the 
dominance  in  the  end  of  the  interests  with  which  he 
is  concerned.  In  the  one  case,  as  in  the  other,  the 
standpoint  is,  therefore,  the  same :  we  ultimately 
stand  face  to  face  in  the  historical  process  with  but  one 
characteristic  principle — the  ascendency  of  the  pres- 
ent, and  the  elimination  from  society  of  every  cause, 
sentiment,  principle,  and  belief  which  prevents  the 
strongest  interest  in  the  present  from  realising  itself. 

As  the  evolutionist  looks  back,  therefore,  over  the 

1  The  Twilight  of  the  Idols,  by  Friedrick  Nietzsche,  trans,  by  T.  Com- 
mon, p.  155.     See  also  Antichrist  and  Z,arathustra. 

2  German  Social  Democracy,  by  Bcrtrand  Russell,  i.     See  also  the 
author's  Social  Evolution,  chap.  viii. 

H 


98  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

history  of  the  clearly  defined  movement  in  modern 
thought,  in  which  the  endeavour  has  been  more  and 
more  authoritatively  made  to  interpret  to  us  the  phe- 
nomenon of  our  Western  democracy,  he  sees  that  it 
is  justifiable  to  make  in  respect  of  it  a  deeply  signifi- 
cant assertion.  It  is  that  this  movement  —  in  all  the 
phases  in  which  it  has  contemplated  the  ascendency 
of  the  interests  of  the  present  in  the  evolutionary 
process,  and  in  which,  therefore,  we  see  it  identifying 
the  interests  of  society  with  the  interests  of  the  indi- 
viduals comprised  within  the  limits  of  political  con- 
sciousness—  has  not  carried  the  theory  of  society,  in 
any  scientific  principle,  a  step  beyond  the  position 
which  it  occupied  twenty-three  centuries  ago  in  Greek 
thought.  It  is  the  theory  of  the  State  alone  which 
we  again  encounter  in  all  the  developments  of  the 
time.  In  modern  thought,  as  we  see  it  represented 
in  this  movement,  the  interest  of  the  State  has  be- 
come again,  just  as  in  the  Greek  civilisation,  the  ulti- 
mate principle  in  the  science  of  society,  the  controlling 
end  in  the  theory  of  human  conduct.  The  State  itself 
has  become,  to  use  the  words  of  Paul  Leroy-Beaulieu, 
an  "Stre  mysteVieux  dont  tant  de  pr^tendus  sages 
prononcent  le  nom  avec  adoration,  que  tous  les 
hommes  invoquent,  que  tous  se  disputent,  et  qui 
semble  etre  le  seul  dieu  auquel  le  monde  moderne 
veuille  garder  respect  et  confiance."  1  We  have  re- 
turned, as  it  were,  to  the  standpoint  of  the  ancient 
world,  when  the  ascendency  of  the  interests  of  the  pres- 
ent, expressing  themselves  through  the  State,  becomes 
once  more  the  ultimate  fact  to  which  every  principle 
of  society  and  of  human  life  is  made  subservient. 

1  L?£tat  moderne  et  ses  fonctiom,  par  Paul  Leroy-Beaulieu,  p.  25. 


in  THE  POSITION  IN   MODERN  THOUGHT  99 

As  the  mind,  with  such  a  conclusion  in  view, 
reverts  to  the  meaning  of  that  characteristic  prin- 
ciple of  the  subordination  of  the  present  to  the 
future  which  we  saw  to  have  governed  the  evolution 
of  life  from  the  beginning ;  as  we  begin  to  perceive 
the  application  to  the  science  of  society  of  that 
great  conception,  which  German  idealism  struggled 
for  150  years  to  bring  to  the  birth  in  coherent 
utterance,  namely,  that  the  history  of  the  world  is 
the  history  of  the  ideas  by  which  the  subordination 
of  the  individual  to  a  world-process  infinite  in  its 
meaning  has  been  effected ;  —  the  character  of  the 
position  in  modern  thought  begins  to  impress  the 
imagination.  For,  as  we  catch  sight  of  what  must 
be  the  real  meaning  of  the  great  process  of  life 
which  has  developed  towards  our  Western  democ- 
racy ;  as  we  perceive  the  significance  of  the  fact 
that  that  process  of  life  has  come  to  occupy  the 
place  it  fills  on  the  stage  of  the  world  only  in  virtue 
of  some  deep-seated  and  inherent  principle  of  fitness 
in  the  stress  out  of  which  it  has  come ;  as  we  begin 
to  realise  something  of  the  nature  of  the  organic, 
subordinating,  and  integrating  principles  which  must 
be  resident  in  it,  —  principles  involving  the  subordi- 
nation of  the  individual  and  all  his  interests,  and 
even  those  of  whole  movements  and  epochs  of  time 
to  the  ends  of  a  process  of  life  moving  forward 
through  the  slow  cosmic  stress  of  the  centuries ; 
nay,  as  we  see  how  it  is  those  same  principles, 
which  must  continue  to  control  our  developing 
civilisation,  should  it  be  destined  to  continue  to 
hold  its  place  in  the  stress  of  the  world  in  the 
future; — there  rises  at  last  in  the  mind  an  over- 


100  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP,  m 

mastering  conviction  of  the  extraordinary  incom- 
pleteness and  insufficiency  of  all  the  conceptions  of 
the  science  of  society  we  have  been  here  consider- 
ing. The  nature  of  the  main  position  in  thought, 
which  underlies  that  attitude  of  doubt,  of  hesitation, 
and  even  of  revolt,  which  the  younger  and  rising 
minds  in  so  many  schools  of  thought  present  to  the 
social  philosophy  of  the  past,  begins  to  be  revealed 
to  us.  It  is  no  question,  we  see,  merely  of  faults,  local 
or  personal,  in  the  systems  of  thought  around  us.  We 
are  regarding  no  merely  passing  phase  of  temporary 
interest,  but  a  position  in  thought  which  separates  two 
epochs  in  the  intellectual  development  of  the  world. 

For,  as  for  a  vast  period  of  time  the  old  phi- 
losophers constructed  their  systems  of  Ptolemaic 
cosmogony  to  centre  in  the  observer  and  revolve 
round  the  little  world  upon  which  he  stood ;  so, 
down  into  the  midst  of  the  time  in  which  we  are 
living,  we  see  the  systems  of  social  theory  we  have 
been  considering  similarly  constructed  to  centre  in 
the  observer,  similarly  conceived  to  revolve  round 
the  petty  interests  which  the  same  individual  saw 
comprised  within  the  limits  of  his  own  political  con- 
sciousness. We  have  reached  a  crisis  in  thought 
where,  to  use  words  of  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,  the 
scenery  has  at  last  become  too  wide  for  the  drama, 
where,  through  the  roof  of  the  theatre  in  which  our 
theorists  have  unfolded  these  little  conceptions  of 
human  progress,  we  see  the  eternal  stars  shining  in 
silent  contempt  of  such  petty  imaginings.1 

1  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  voL  i.  p.  82. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE   PHENOMENON   OF   WESTERN    LIBERALISM 

WHEN  we  have  become  conscious,  however  imper- 
fectly, of  the  nature  of  the  position  defined  in  the 
last  chapter,  the  interest  of  the  situation  will,  in  all 
probability,  be  felt  to  deepen  as  soon  as  the  attempt 
is  made  to  carry  the  analysis  a  stage  further.  When 
it  is  once  realised  that  the  development  in  Western 
history  which  has  slowly  carried  our  civilisation 
towards  the  forms  of  Democracy  cannot,  of  neces- 
sity, be  expressed  in  any  mere  theory  of  the  State, 
or  in  any  of  those  current  formulas  in  which  the  in- 
terests of  the  individuals,  comprised  within  the  limits 
of  political  consciousness,  are  conceived  as  the  domi- 
nant factor  in  human  evolution ;  the  mind  turns 
instinctively  to  scrutinise  the  phenomenon  of  West- 
ern Liberalism  as  a  whole.  How  is  it  that  the  mean- 
ing of  the  progressive  movement  which  it  represents 
has  come  to  be  interpreted  to  us  in  the  terms  in 
which  we  have  thus  found  it  to  be  set  forth  in  current 
thought  ? 

Nothing  can  be  more  remarkable  than  the  position 
to  which  modern  Liberalism  has  been  actually  re- 
duced in  practice  by  the  endeavour  to  present  it  as  a 
movement  resting  under  all  its  forms  on  a  theory  of 
existing  interests  in  the  State.  The  paralysing  con- 
tradictions resulting  from  the  attempt  are  a  char- 
acteristic feature  of  the  time.  The  most  striking 

101 


102  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

spectacle  in  modern  history,  as  we  shall  see  in  a 
subsequent  chapter,  is  the  position  arising,  not  only 
in  internal  politics,  but  in  international  relations, 
from  the  endeavour  to  represent  the  meaning  of  the 
world-process,  in  the  midst  of  which  we  are  living,  by 
a  business  theory  of  the  State.  Following  the  analy- 
sis in  the  preceding  chapters  we  have  only  to  read 
between  the  lines  of  Professor  Ritchie's  examination l 
of  the  formulas  of  "  Natural  Rights,"  which  modern 
thought  has  essayed  to  put  into  the  mouth  of  Demos, 
from  the  French  Revolution  onwards,  to  realise  in 
what  irretrievable  ruin  the  theories  which  have  ac- 
companied that  attempt  lie  around  us  at  the  present 
time. 

In  what,  then,  consists  the  ultimate  claim  of  West- 
ern Liberalism  as  a  principle  of  progress  ?  It  cannot 
represent  simply  the  claim  of  the  interests  in  the 
present  to  be  the  dominant  factor  in  the  evolutionary 
process,  as  we  have  seen  that  claim  expressed  in  the 
conceptions  of  utilitarianism,  and  in  the  theories  alike 
of  Nietzsche  and  of  Marx.  Nor  can  it  be  the  claim 
of  individualism.  For  how  could  the  individual  be 
greater  than  society  ?  Nor  can  it  be  the  claim  of  the 
majority  to  rule.  For  to  attempt  to  reduce  the  indi- 
viduals, comprised  even  within  our  own  civilisation 
at  the  present  day,  to  the  rule  of  the  majority,  would 
be  to  attempt  to  put  the  world's  progress  back  a 
thousand  years.  Nay,  it  would  be  undoubtedly  to 
provoke  from  the  advanced  peoples,  and  even  from 
many  of  the  advocates  of  universal  peace  amongst 
them,  a  resistance  as  determined,  as  unhesitating,  and 

1  Natural  Rights,  by  David  G.  Ritchie. 


iv  WESTERN  LIBERALISM  1 03 

as  bloody  as  any  of  which  history  could  furnish  rec- 
ord. Nor  can  it  be  the  claim  of  Democracy  as  a  form 
of  government.  For  we  have  only  to  reflect  to  see 
that  peoples  have  lived,  and  still  live,  under  Democ- 
racy as  a  form  of  government,  while  remaining  sepa- 
rated by  an  immense  interval  from  the  spirit  and  the 
meaning  of  the  civilisation  represented  by  the  ad- 
vanced peoples  of  the  present  day.  Nor  can  it  be, 
in  the  last  resort,  the  claim  of  nationality.  For  one 
of  the  most  curious  spectacles  of  the  modern  world 
is  that  of  mere  tribal  or  local  egoisms  which  have 
expressed  themselves  under  the  forms  of  nationality, 
claiming,  in  this  respect  alone,  the  rights  and  toler- 
ance of  our  civilisation.  The  inherent  contradiction 
is  often  painfully  felt  by  the  best-intentioned  minds  ; 
it  being  dimly  perceived  that,  according  to  existing 
theories  of  nationality,  all  that  interval  of  progress 
which  divides  the  life  of  the  highest  civilisation  from 
that  of  the  lowest  social  state  would  have  to  be  con- 
demned, there  being  no  single  step  in  that  interval, 
whereby  a  higher  form  of  social  life  had  replaced  a 
lower  form,  which  could  be  justified  under  current 
conceptions  of  the  rights  of  nationalities. 

On  what,  therefore,  in  the  last  resort,  rests  the 
claim  of  Western  Liberalism  ?  How  has  the  move- 
ment towards  Democracy,  which  it  represents,  come 
to  be  associated  in  history  with  interpretations  which 
the  evolutionist  sees  must  be  essentially  superficial, 
and  even  utterly  misrepresentative  of  the  real  mean- 
ing of  the  phenomenon  we  are  regarding  ? 

Now,  if  we  endeavour  to  regard  Western  Liberal- 
ism as  any  other  natural  phenomenon,  and,  therefore, 
in  so  doing,  endeavour  to  keep  the  mind  entirely 


104  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

detached  from  the  prejudices  and  prepossessions 
that  have  unavoidably  become  associated  with  it  in 
modern  thought,  there  will  probably  be  little  doubt 
or  hesitation  as  to  the  point  at  which  we  must  take 
up  the  study  of  the  movement  towards  Democracy 
with  which  it  is  associated. 

For  the  origin  of  that  movement  we  shall  have  to 
go  back  beyond  the  period  of  the  French  Revolution. 
No  one  nowadays,  says  Borgeaud,  attributes  the  the- 
ory of  the  social  contract  to  Rousseau.1  The  Revo- 
lution in  France  is,  strictly  speaking,  to  be  regarded 
as  no  more  than  a  local  incident  in  a  movement  in 
Western  thought  which  had  become  general,  a  prod- 
uct born  at  a  stage  when  that  movement  had  resulted, 
to  use  words  of  William  Clarke,  in  "a  general  Euro- 
pean culture  common  to  all  the  thinkers  of  the  later 
part  of  the  eighteenth  century  —  to  Kant  and 
Rousseau,  to  Franklin  and  Turgot,  nay,  to  such 
Conservatives  as  Gibbon  and  Hume,  and  such  a 
Welt-Kind  as  Goethe."  2  Every  article  in  the  creed 
of  the  French  Revolution,  as  Professor  Ritchie  has 
shown  in  detail,3  had  been  already  formulated  in  an 
earlier  development  of  Western  thought. 

For  the  real  origin  of  the  movement  in  which 
Western  Democracy  takes  its  rise,  we  must  go  back 
to  the  revolution  which  we  behold  in  progress  in 
England  more  than  a  century  earlier.  It  is  here 
that  we  stand  and  watch  the  unloosening  of  the 
forces  which  have  set  in  motion  the  modern  world. 

1  The  Rise  of  Modern  Democracy  in  Old  and  New  England,  by 
Charles  Borgeaud,  Member  of  the  Faculty  of  Law,  Geneva,  c.  iii. 

2  "  Bismarck,"  by  Wm.  Clarke,  Contemporary  Review,  No.  397. 
*  Natural  Rights,  by  David  G.  Ritchie,  chap.  i. 


iv  WESTERN   LIBERALISM  10$ 

"Although  no  such  inference  could  be  drawn  from 
English  phraseology,  there  is  no  doubt,"  says  Maine, 
"  that  the  modern  popular  government  of  our  day  is 
of  purely  English  origin."1  It  is  in  the  movement 
which  upheaved  England  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
as  Borgeaud  points  out,  that  we  see  being  formulated 
for  the  first  time  in  Western  thought  the  political 
manifestoes  of  modern  Democracy.2 

Now,  if  we  concentrate  attention  on  the  revolution 
in  progress  in  England  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
we  shall  have  to  note  certain  facts  of  great  interest 
respecting  it.  The  characteristic  doctrines  of  Democ- 
racy to  which  that  revolution  gave  rise  were  undoubt- 
edly, as  Maine  has  pointed  out,3  entirely  different  from 
any  which  had  hitherto  prevailed  in  the  world.  They 
were,  moreover,  it  may  be  observed,  inherent  in  the 
movement  itself.  They  constituted  its  distinctive  and 
essential  teaching.  They  were  not  only  clearly 
defined  at  an  early  stage  of  the  movement,  but  they 
were  set  forth  at  that  stage  in  practically  the  identical 
form  in  which  they  have  since  been  included  in  the 
programme  of  the  modern  progressive  movement  in 
nearly  every  country  embraced  in  our  civilisation. 

If,  for  instance,  we  turn,  in  Mr.  Gardiner's  Con- 
stitutional Documents,  to  the  Agreement  of  the  People, 
dated  i$th  of  January,  1649,*  an<^  presented  in  the 
name  of  the  army  which  had  broken  up  the  forces  of 
the  king  in  England,  we  find  already  outlined  at  this 

1  Popular  Government,  by  Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine,  p.  8. 

2  The  Rise  of  Modern  Democracy  in   Old  and  New  England,  by 
Charles  Borgeaud,  c.  iv.  *  Cf.  Popular  Government,  pp.  8-60. 

*  Constitutional  Documents  of  the  Puritan  Revolution,  by  S.  R.  Gar- 
diner, No.Sl,  p.  359. 


IO6  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

stage  the  actual  political  principles  around  which 
the  progressive  movement  in  the  modern  world  has 
since,  in  the  main,  centred.  The  doctrine  of  the 
sovereignty  of  the  people ;  of  supreme  power  vested 
in  a  single  representative  assembly  elected  for  a 
limited  term ;  of  equal  voting  power  vested  in  all 
those  who  pay  taxes ;  of  religious  freedom ;  of  the 
separation  of  Church  and  State ;  and  even  that  doc- 
trine, subsequently  adopted  in  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  of  America,  of  the  limitation  for  the 
time  being  of  the  power  of  the  representative  assembly 
itself  by  certain  fundamental  principles  embodied  in 
the  Constitution  ;  —  are  all  clearly  formulated  in  this 
document.  These  are  doctrines  representing,  for  the 
most  part,  principles  different  from  any  which  had 
been  enunciated  in  any  previous  period.  They  are 
the  doctrines  which  have  since  controlled  the  course 
of  political  development  in  England  and  amongst  the 
English-speaking  people,  which  have  profoundly  influ- 
enced the  political  history  of  modern  Europe  as  a 
whole,  and  which  we  find  included  at  the  present  day 
in  the  political  constitutions  of  democracies  like  those 
of  France,  Switzerland,  and  the  United  States. 

If  we  ask  now  what  it  was  that  led  to  the  promul- 
gation of  principles  destined  thus  to  influence  the 
development  of  the  modern  world  — principles  which, 
it  may  be  observed,  were  widely  different  in  signifi- 
cance from  those  which  had  hitherto  prevailed  in  his- 
tory—  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
answer  which  must  be  given.  They  were,  we  see,  in 
the  last  analysis,  principles  proceeding  directly  from 
the  conceptions  which  had  so  profoundly  influenced 
men's  minds  in  the  great  religious  revolution  which 


iv  WESTERN   LIBERALISM  IO/ 

had  just  swept  over  the  face  of  Europe.  They  were 
unmistakably  the  result  of  these  conceptions  ;  they 
were  everywhere  intimately  and  inseparably  associated 
with  them  in  the  minds  of  the  leaders  of  the  political 
movement  which  was  transforming  society. 

When  we  regard  closely  the  leaders  of  this  move- 
ment in  England  —  who  were  thus  engaged  in  for- 
mulating the  principles  upon  which  the  political 
development  of  the  modern  world  has  since  proceeded 
—  we  must  be  struck  with  one  unmistakable  charac- 
teristic of  their  standpoint.  These  men  were  en- 
gaged in  the  endeavour  to  establish  what  they  held 
to  be  the  first  principles  of  political  society.  Yet 
we  have  to  remark  upon  the  fact  that  the  last  thing 
they  had  in  mind  was  the  utilitarian  interests  of 
society  comprised  within  the  limits  of  political  con- 
sciousness. Nay  more,  the  very  essence  of  their 
work  lay,  as  we  see,  in  the  fact  that  they  were  en- 
deavouring to  project  the  ruling  principles  of  society 
altogether  beyond  the  meaning  of  those  institutions 
and  causes  which  had,  throughout  the  past,  entangled 
them  within  the  meaning  of  the  State. 

We  cannot,  therefore,  fail  to  notice  the  tremen- 
dous assumption  which  underlay  every  one  of  the 
principles  which  these  men  were  propounding.  The 
most  fundamental  political  doctrine  of  modern  De- 
mocracy is,  for  instance,  that  of  the  native  equality 
of  all  men.  It  is,  in  reality,  around  this  doctrine 
that  every  phase  of  the  progressive  political  move- 
ment in  our  civilisation  has  centred  for  the  last 
two  centuries.  It  is  this  doctrine  which  is  asserted 
in  the  political  constitution  of  every  country  where 
the  principles  of  Western  Liberalism  have  been  ac- 


108  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

cepted.  It  is  this  doctrine  which  is  denied  in  all 
other  political  constitutions.  It  is  the  doctrine  of  the 
native  equality  of  men  that  has  been  behind  the  long 
movement  in  our  Western  world  which  has  emanci- 
pated the  people  and  slowly  equipped  them  with 
political  power ;  and  it  is  the  repudiation  of  it  which 
constitutes  the  ultimate  fact  in  every  phase  and  stage 
of  the  resistance  which  this  movement  has  encoun- 
tered. Professor  Ritchie  has  enumerated  1  the  "  nat- 
ural rights  "  which  have  been  most  commonly  claimed 
as  such  in  the  modern  movement  towards  Democracy, 
as  the  rights  of  life,  of  liberty,  of  toleration,  of  public 
meeting  and  association,  of  contract,  of  resistance  to 
oppression,  of  equality,  of  property,  and  of  pursuing 
and  obtaining  happiness.  But  they  may  all  be  re- 
solved into  the  claim  of  the  native  equality  of  men. 
Under  whatever  form  expressed,  and  through  what- 
ever involved  process  we  follow  it,  down  even  into 
the  theories  of  the  followers  of  Marx,  it  is  this  doc- 
trine of  the  equality  of  men  which  underlies,  as  a  first 
principle,  the  creed  of  every  democratic  party  in  the 
politics  of  the  modern  world. 

Nevertheless,  what  we  see  is  that  by  the  men  with 
whom  the  assertion  of  "natural  right"  originated  in 
England  the  doctrine  of  the  native  equality  of  men 
was  most  certainly  not  accepted  as  a  first  principle.  It 
had  no  meaning  apart  by  itself.  We  see  that  it  was 
accepted  at  the  time,  as  it  was  accepted  later  in 
Locke's  writings,2  only  as  a  corollary  to  a  conception 
of  the  relationship  in  which  men  were  held  to  stand 
to  a  meaning  in  their  lives  which  transcended  the 

1  Cf.  Natural  Rights,  chaps,  vi.— xiv. 

8  Cf.  Two  Treatises  of  Government,  bk.  ii.  chap.  ii. 


iv  WESTERN   LIBERALISM  1 09 

meaning  of  the  interests  included  within  the  limits 
of  political  consciousness.  Without  this  conception 
the  theory  of  equality  would  have  presented  itself  to 
its  original  sponsors  as  being  just  as  lacking  of  sup- 
port from  the  teaching  of  reason  and  experience  as 
the  most  hostile  critic  of  Democracy  has  endeavoured 
to  prove  it.  Nay  more,  it  would  have  appeared  as 
immeasurably  and  as  inconceivably  absurd  as  even 
Nietzsche  in  his  fierce  invective  has  in  our  time 
asserted  it  to  be. 

When  the  scrutiny  is  continued  we  must  notice 
again  how  fundamental  was  the  assumption  these 
men  had  in  mind  in  laying  down  that  doctrine  which 
Maine  has  pointed  out  to  be  absolutely  new  and  ex- 
ceptional in  history  —  the  central  doctrine  upon  which 
the  whole  theory  and  practice  of  modern  Democracy 
has  since  been  founded  —  namely,  that  all  authority 
is  ultimately  resident  in  the  people,  and  that  govern- 
ments hold  their  power  only  by  delegation  from  them.1 

In  the  movement  in  progress  in  England  in  the 
seventeenth  century  the  people  were  placed  in  the 
seat  of  the  king.  But  we  notice  at  once  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  conception  by  which  the  transition  was 
justified  at  the  time.  It  did  not  involve  the  assump- 
tion that  there  remained  no  ruling  principle  resident 
in  society  beyond  the  will  of  society  directed  towards 
the  realisation  of  the  utilitarian  interests  of  its  exist- 
ing members.  Nothing  could  have  been  further  from 
the  minds  of  the  propounders  of  the  doctrine  under- 
lying the  change.  The  accompanying  conception 
represented  almost  the  very  opposite  of  such  an 
assumption.  It  represented,  in  the  last  analysis, 

1  Popular  Government,  pp.  8-13. 


HO  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

rather  the  endeavour  to  project  the  controlling  princi- 
ples of  society  altogether  beyond  the  limits  of  politi- 
cal consciousness.  For  the  characteristic  meaning 
of  the  revolution  which  was  in  progress  arose  from 
the  fact  that  it  was  within  those  limits  that  the  gov- 
erning principles  of  society  had  necessarily  been  en- 
tangled in  all  previous  theories  of  ultimate  authority 
conceived  as  resident  either  in  the  Church,  the  King, 
or  the  State. 

The  far-reaching  significance  of  the  principle  under- 
lying the  transition  is,  in  short,  immediately  evident 
as  soon  as  we  reflect  on  the  nature  of  the  inherent 
tendency  of  human  development,  as  discussed  in  the 
preceding  chapters,  to  project  the  controlling  mean- 
ing of  the  evolutionary  process  in  society  beyond  the 
limits  of  political  consciousness.  We  begin  to  dis- 
tinguish the  character  of  the  interval  which  separates 
such  a  conception  of  civil  society,  not  only  from  that 
which  existed  in  the  ancient  civilisations,  but  from 
that  which  had  hitherto  prevailed  in  Western  Europe. 
The  character  of  the  principle  introduced  remained 
as  yet  undefined  in  men's  minds.  It  was  unanalysed 
in  any  of  the  prevailing  theories  of  society.  But  the 
import  of  the  new  departure  is  unmistakable  to  the 
evolutionist. 

As  the  observer  follows  the  development  of  the 
theory  of  society  here  launched  into  view  the  in- 
terest continues.  The  first  political  writers  who 
present  themselves  in  England  as  endeavouring  to 
deal  on  scientific  methods  with  the  principles  of  that 
new  order  of  society  which  was  to  ripen  towards  the 
modern  epoch,  consist  of  a  group  in  which  Hobbes 
and  Locke  are  the  most  prominent  examples.  Of 


IV  WESTERN   LIBERALISM  III 

these  Locke  in  particular  stands  out  as  a  command- 
ing figure,  destined  as  he  was,  more  than  any  single 
writer  of  the  period,  to  influence  both  directly  and 
indirectly  throughout  Western  Europe  the  subse- 
quent development  of  the  theory  of  the  modern  State. 
Now  if  we  take  the  political  works  of  these  two 
writers  and  analyse  them  carefully  at  the  present  time 
—  following  the  principles  enunciated  by  Hobbes 
into  the  form  in  which  they  become  developed  by 
Locke1  —  the  result  is  very  striking.  We  descend 
at  once,  as  it  were,  beneath  the  surface  of  things 
into  a  region  of  twilight  where,  as  in  a  vast  work- 
shop, we  see  being  slowly  extended  the  great  frame- 
work of  principles  on  which  the  modern  theory  of 
society  has  been  reared.  As  we  traverse  backwards 
and  forwards  this  region  of  realities,  and  begin  to 
understand  the  nature  of  the  spectacle  before  us,  the 
effect  on  the  mind  is  remarkable.  Here  we  see  are 
all  the  doctrines  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  of  a 
later  era  of  Democracy.  Here  is  the  doctrine  of 
"  the  state  of  nature,"  of  the  "  social  contract "  of 
the  "  sovereign  people."  Here  also  is  the  doctrine 
of  the  native  equality  of  men,  of  the  separation  of 
Church  and  State,  and  of  fundamental  principles 
resident  in  society  and  limiting  the  powers  of  legis- 
lators and  of  governments.  They  are  the  doctrines 
round  which  the  stress  of  the  political  life  of  our 
Western  world  has  since  centred.  They  are  doc- 
trines of  which  the  greater  number  are  accepted  at 
the  present  day  as  first  principles  in  the  teaching 

1  Compare  chaps,  xii.-xxxii.  in  Hobbes*  Leviathan  (Sir  William 
Molesworth's  edition,  1839),  and  the  three  essays,  Liberty,  Dominion, 
Religion,  with  Locke's  Two  Treatises  of  Government,  bk.  ii. 


112  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

which  Democracy  is  offered  at  the  hands  of  its 
interpreters. 

Yet,  as  the  mind  endeavours  to  establish  the  ulti- 
mate relationship  of  the  doctrines  here  in  sight,  a 
primary  conviction  regarding  them  becomes  irresist- 
ible. None  of  them  we  see  is  accepted  here  as  a  first 
principle.  For,  underneath  all  the  discussion  of  the 
outward  utilitarian  features  of  society  that  we  observe 
proceeding,  there  extends  the  fundamental  assump- 
tions that  have  been  already  referred  to.  It  is  upon 
these  assumptions  that  all  the  principles  which  are 
being  enunciated  ultimately  rest.  Everywhere  in  the 
theories  of  Hobbes  and  Locke  we  find,  if  the  exami- 
nation is  carried  far  enough,  that  we  stand  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  same  fact.  Society  and  all  its  members, 
and  all  the  purposes  for  which  it  is  constituted,  are 
regarded  in  the  last  resort  as  standing  in  subordinate 
relationship  to  ends  and  principles  which  transcend 
the  limits  of  political  consciousness. 

In  the  theories  of  both  Hobbes  and  Locke,  for 
instance,  men  were  conceived,  before  governments 
as  yet  came  into  being,  as  existing  in  "  a  state  of 
nature," -  —  free,  equal,  and  independent.1  The  great 
question  of  the  time  to  which  the  civil  Revolution  in 
England  had  directed  attention  was :  What  was  the 
nature  of  the  restrictions  men  made  in  giving  up  part 
of  their  assumed  rights  in  a  state  of  nature  to  estab- 
lish civil  authority  and  obtain  the  benefits  of  gov- 
ernment ?  What  was,  therefore,  the  nature  of  the 
ultimate  appeal  from  civil  authority  so  established  ? 
Hobbes,  supported  by  Spinoza,  Puffendorf,  and  other 

1  Leviathan,  c.  xiii.-xxi.  and  c.  xxxi.  ;  Two  Treatises  of  Government, 
i.  c.  ii.  iii. 


IV  WESTERN   LIBERALISM  113 

writers  on  the  continent  of  Europe,  maintained  that 
once  established  the  authority  became  absolute. 
Locke  and  those  who  followed  him  maintained,  on 
the  contrary,  that  having  failed  in  its  purpose  it 
might  be  deposed.1  But  we  have  only  to  carry  the 
examination  far  enough  to  find  that  the  assumption 
upon  which  the  argument  rested  in  one  case  equally 
with  the  other  was  that  men  were  in  all  these  rela- 
tions regarded  as  standing  in  a  position  of  personal 
responsibility  to  principles,  the  meaning,  the  claim, 
and  the  operation  of  which  were  conceived  as  pro- 
jected beyond  the  bounds  of  political  consciousness. 
Although  to  Hobbes  the  "  state  of  nature "  was  a 
state  of  war,  when  his  argument  is  followed  in  the 
first  thirty-one  chapters  of  the  Leviathan,  or  in 
chapter  iv.  of  the  essay  on  Liberty  2  (entitled  "  That 
the  Law  of  Nature  is  a  Divine  Law")  it  may  be  seen 
how  this  fundamental  assumption  controls  the  entire 
argument.  In  Locke's  imaginary  "state  of  nature," 
again,  the  primary  conception  from  which  the  argu- 
ment proceeds  is  that  men  in  a  state  of  nature  were 
to  be  regarded  as  born  equal  and  independent.  But 
when  one  after  another  of  the  passages  in  the  Two 
Treatises  of  Government  is  passed  before  the  mind, 
it  may  be  perceived  how  characteristic  and  funda- 
mental is  the  assumption  on  which  the  conception  is 
made  to  rest.  The  state  of  nature,  says  Locke,  in 
effect,  has  itself  a  law  to  govern  it  —  a  law  which, 
when  we  come  to  inquire  into  its  character,  is  per- 

1  Two  Treatises  of  Government,  c.  xix.   (of  the  Dissolution  of  Gov- 
ernments). 

2  Cf.  Hobbes'  works,  edited  by  Sir  William  Molesworth,  vol.  ii.     Lib- 
erty —  Dominion  —  Religion. 


114  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

ceived  to  be  so  far-reaching  that  it  controls  all  the 
principles  of  the  political  state  which  is  regarded  as 
having  succeeded  to  it.1 

When  men  were  regarded  as  having  left  the  state 
of  nature,  and  as  organised  into  societies  under  gov- 
ernment, the  tacit  assumption  underlying  and  per- 
vading the  entire  argument  is  found  to  be  still  the 
same.  Hobbes,  from  his  point  of  view,  undertook  to 
prove  that  men  owed  absolute  obedience  to  the  civil 
authority  once  constituted.  But  it  is  only  necessary 
to  examine  the  stages  of  the  argument  to  see  how  it 
is  all  in  the  end  bound  up  with  the  same  assumption 
of  a  sense  of  responsibility  in  men  to  principles,  the 
claims  of  which,  on  the  individual,  transcended  the 
utilitarian  interests  of  existing  society.2  Locke  from 

1  Speaking  of  the  "  state  of  nature,"  Locke  continues :  "  But  though 
this  be  a  state  of  liberty,  yet  it  is  not  a  state  of  license  ;  though  man 
in  that  state  have  an  uncontrollable  liberty  to  dispose  of  his  person  or 
possessions,  yet  he  has  not  liberty  to  destroy  himself,  or  so  much  as 
any  creature  in  his  possession,  but  where  some  nobler  use  than  its  bare 
preservation  calls  for  it.     The  state  of  Nature  has  a  law  of  Nature  to 
govern  it,  which  obliges  every  one,  and  reason,  which   is  that  law, 
teaches  all  mankind  who  will  but  consult  it,  that  being  all  equal  and 
independent,  no  one  ought  to  harm  another  in  his  life,  health,  liberty, 
or  possessions  ;  for  men  being  all  the  workmanship  of  one  omnipotent 
and  infinitely  wise  Maker  ;   all  the  servants  of  one  sovereign  Master, 
sent  into  the  world  by  His  order  and  about  His  business  ;   they  are 
His  property,  whose  workmanship  they  are  made  to  last  during  His, 
not  one  another's,  pleasure  "  (  Two  Treatises  of  Government,  by  John 
Locke,  bk.  ii.  chap.  ii.). 

2  Obedience  to  constituted  authority  "where  it  is  not  repugnant  to 
the  laws  of  God,"  was  what  Hobbes  considered  he  had  proved  in  the 
first  thirty  chapters  of  the  Leviathan.     "  There  wants  only,"  he  con- 
tinued, "  for  the  entire  knowledge  of  civil  duty  to  know  what  are  those 
laws  of  God  "  ;   and  he  proceeds  to  give  an  exposition  in  which  the 
assumed  sense  of  continued  and  personal  responsibility  to  an  authority 
outside  of  society  presents  itself  as  the  central  and  dominant  feature. 
See  Leviathan,  by  Thomas  Hobbes,  chap.  xxxi.  and  following. 


iv  WESTERN  LIBERALISM  115 

a  different  standpoint  insisted  that  the  supreme 
authority  in  civil  society  could  not  assume  to  itself 
any  power  which  was  not  in  accordance  with  certain 
fundamental  laws.  But  here  again,  when  the  exami- 
nation is  carried  far  enough,  it  becomes  evident  that 
the  argument  still  rests,  in  the  last  resort,  on  the 
assumption  of  principles  operative  in  society,  the  con- 
tent of  which  transcended  that  of  the  utilitarian  inter- 
ests of  its  existing  members.1 

In  all  this  it  is  of  the  first  importance  to  keep 
in  mind  the  character  of  the  revolution  in  England 
which  had  produced  the  movement  in  thought  we 
are  here  regarding.  That  revolution  represents,  we 
must  always  remember,  not,  indeed,  the  attempt  to 
set  forth  the  theory  of  human  development  as  a 
theory  of  the  utilitarian  interests  of  the  existing 
members  of  society.  It  represents,  in  effect,  rather 
the  first  profound  effort  of  the  human  mind  to  en- 
tirely disengage  principles,  the  claim  of  which  on 
the  individual  was  conceived  as  transcending  that  of 
all  interests  included  within  the  limits  of  political 
consciousness,  from  all  theories  whatever  of  the 
political  State  with  which  they  had  been  hitherto 
entangled.  The  deep  import  of  the  spectacle  is,  in 
short,  unmistakable.  Masked  beneath  the  assump- 
tions of  the  time,  still  undefined  and  unanalysed  in 
men's  minds,  there  lies  hidden  in  the  process  in 
progress  a  new  principle  of  society.  We  are  really 

1  Locke  considered  the  power  of  legislators  always  limited  by  one 
principle  :  "The  rules  that  they  make  for  other  men's  actions  must,  as 
well  as  their  own  and  other  men's  actions,  he  conformable  to  the  law 
of  nature,  ijc.  to  the  will  of  God." —  7'wo  Treatises  of  Government, 
lik.  ii.  chap.  xi. 


Il6  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

watching  a  development  in  which  the  principles  of 
government  are  being  completely  disentangled  from 
those  of  absolute  ethics  ;  the  overwhelming  signifi- 
cance of  the  transition  consisting,  as  the  evolutionist 
begins  to  distinguish,  in  the  fact  that  the  governing 
principles  of  the  social  process  are  thereby,  for  the 
first  time  in  human  history,  being  projected  alto- 
gether beyond  the  control  of  merely  political  con- 
sciousness. Hobbes  in  this  light  is  to  be  regarded  as 
the  first  social  theorist  who  marked  off  the  domain 
of  positive  law  in  society  from  the  region  of  ethics, 
in  which  there  continued  to  be  still  involved  the 
larger  and  fundamental  principles  of  "  society  "  as  a 
whole.  And  he  began  the  process,  as  Sir  Frederick 
Pollock  with  deep  insight  points  out,  unconsciously 
and  of  necessity,  through  trying  to  make  legal  su- 
premacy the  final  and  conclusive  standard  of  political 
right.1 

It  is  from  this  point  forward  that  we  have  now  to 
watch  the  development  of  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able situations  in  the  history  of  thought.  What  we 
have  seen  so  far  has  been  the  theory  of  the  utilitarian 
State  beginning  to  be  disengaged  from  those  larger 
principles  of  human  conduct  in  society  which  had 
hitherto  included  it.  But  what  we  have  now  to 
watch  is  a  development  in  which  we  see  this  same 
theory  of  the  utilitarian  State,  as  it  becomes  thus 
differentiated,  gradually  tending  in  Western  thought 

1  Cf.  History  of  the  Science  of  Politics,  iv.  But  as  a  consequence  of 
his  position,  Hobbes  has  had  the  fate  of  appearing  henceforward  in  a 
development  of  Western  thought,  the  real  significance  of  which  is  only 
beginning  to  be  understood,  as  the  intellectual  father  of  the  mechanical 
and  frankly  materialistic  school  of  social  theory. 


IV  WESTERN   LIBERALISM  117 

to  be  accepted,  by  itself  alone,  as  the  whole  science 
of  our  social  evolution.  Gradually  dissociated  in  the 
minds  of  men  from  the  fundamental  assumptions  to 
which  it  was  related  at  the  outset,  and  upon  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  rested  the  central  and  characteristic 
doctrines  of  modern  Democracy,  it  becomes  slowly 
developed  through  the  literature  of  the  French  Rev- 
olution into  that  theory  of  Western  Liberalism 
which,  as  it  culminated  at  last  in  England  in  the 
writings  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  must  excite  the  amaze- 
ment of  every  mind  which  has  mastered,  in  the  light 
of  the  modern  doctrine  of  evolution,  the  nature  of 
the  system  of  life  unfolding  itself  in  Western  civilisa- 
tion. As  if  in  effect,  says  Nietzsche  —  speaking 
from  his  own  point  of  view  —  as  if  the  whole  train  of 
ideas  leading  to  the  modern  development  towards 
Democracy,  and  springing  from  the  system  of  re- 
ligious belief  associated  with  our  civilisation,  is  not  a 
self-contained  system,  a  view  of  things  consistent  and 
complete  in  itself !  "  As  if  we  could  break  out  of  it 
a  fundamental  idea  and  thereby  not  break  the  whole 
into  pieces  !  "  1 

As  we  turn  our  faces  now  from  the  period  of  Locke 
onwards,  we  have  in  view,  in  the  subsequent  history 
of  Western  thought,  a  spectacle  so  extraordinary  that, 
if  it  were  not  presented  in  the  clearest  outline,  it 
must  have  appeared  to  verge  on  the  incredible. 

The  first  aspect  of  this  development  presents  itself 
as  we  behold  the  ideas  which  Hobbcs  had  set  in 
motion  in  England  obtaining  a  wider  currency  on 
the  continent  of  Europe.  The  theory  of  government 

1  Cf.  The  Twilight  of  the  fJols,  by  Friedrick  Nietzsche. 


Il8  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

and  of  conduct  developed  by  Hobbes  was  soon  taken 
up,  and,  in  many  of  its  leading  features,  expanded  by 
Spinoza.  Yet  we  notice  at  once  a  certain  difference 
beneath  the  surface.  The  utilitarian  theory  of  the 
State  is,  it  may  be  distinguished,  already  tending  to 
be  developed  on  the  continent  as  a  self-contained 
science  of  society,  apart  from  those  fundamental 
assumptions  with  which  it  was  at  first  associated  in 
England.  Hobbes'  theory  of  the  ultimate  causes  of 
human  conduct  in  selfishness  is  on  its  way,  in  the 
hands  of  Spinoza,  to  be  developed  into  that  complete 
self-centred  equilibrium  of  ethical  principles  which 
later,  in  the  hands  of  Bentham  and  John  Stuart  Mill, 
was  to  be  considered  as  revolving  in  all  its  phases 
round  the  central  conception  of  the  enlightened  self- 
interest  of  the  individual  in  the  existing  political 
State. 

When  the  period  of  the  French  Revolution  is 
reached,  great  progress,  it  may  be  observed,  has 
been  already  made  in  the  direction  in  which  this  de- 
velopment is  proceeding.  To  all  outward  appearance, 
it  is  still  the  principles  of  the  English  revolutionists 
of  the  seventeenth  century  which  are  everywhere 
dominant  in  Western  thought.  That  men  are  born 
free,  equal,  and  independent,  and  in  possession  of 
certain  inherent  and  inalienable  rights,  has  become 
a  universal  assumption.1  Locke's  principles  have 
influenced  in  every  direction  the  work  of  the  Encyclo- 
paedists in  France.  In  the  hands  of  Diderot,  D'Alem- 
bert,  Holbach,  and  others,  they  have  been  used  with 
far-reaching  effect  against  the  old  order  of  things  in 

1  Cf.  Ritchie's  Natural  Rights,  c.  i.  ;  Bryce's  American  Common- 
wealth, vol.  i.  c.  xxxvii. 


iv  WESTERN   LIBERALISM  1 19 

France.  They  have  crossed  the  Atlantic,  and  have 
become  associated  with  the  spirit  of  government 
throughout  English-speaking  America.  They  are 
expressed  in  a  declaration  —  soon  to  be  repeated  in 
the  constitutions  of  other  American  States — of  the 
"Bill  of  Rights"  of  Virginia  in  1776;  in  the  Decla- 
ration of  American  Independence  of  the  same  year ; l 
and  they  constitute  the  central  principles  of  the 
French  Revolution  as  set  forth  in  the  Declarations 
of  1791  and  I793-2 

Yet  if  we  look  beneath  all  the  outward  similarity 
of  words  and  forms,  we  may  perceive  that,  on  the 
continent  of  Europe,  a  clearly  defined  process  of 
development,  away  from  the  position  of  Locke,  is 
proceeding  in  thought.  It  is  the  theory  of  the 
utilitarian  State  alone  which  is  coming  to  be  re- 
garded as  embracing  the  whole  science  of  society. 
And  in  the  science  of  society,  as  thus  conceived,  no 
essential  connection  is  assumed  to  exist  between  the 
principles  on  which  it  is  made  to  rest  and  those 
ideas  with  which  we  observed  the  principles  of 
society  to  be  involved  in  the  minds  of  the  civil  revo- 
lutionists in  England  in  the  midst  of  the  religious 
movement  of  the  seventeenth  century.  The  princi- 
ples of  modern  Democracy,  which  in  England  in  that 
century  were  based  on  certain  fundamental  assump- 
tions without  which  they  were  regarded  as  having 
absolutely  no  meaning,  are  coming,  it  may  be  ob- 
served, to  be  accepted  as  standing  entirely  alone,  on 

1  Macdonald's  Select  Documents   Illustrative  of  the  History  of  the 
United  States,  No.   I. 

2  See  Paine's  Rights  of  Man ;  Maine's  Wars  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, vol.  i.,  Introduction  ;   and  Ritchie's  Natural  Rights,  Appendix. 


120  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

their  own  merits  and  in  their  own  right.  Outward 
forms  of  words  serve  to  mask  the  transition  which 
is  taking  place,  but  the  character  of  the  process  is 
unmistakable.  By  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century 
the  intellectual  conception  of  Western  Liberalism,  as 
we  see  it  presented  in  the  literature  of  the  French 
Revolution,  has  come  to  represent  simply  the  theory 
of  the  political  State.  It  is  already  detached  from 
history  and  from  the  development  in  our  civilisation 
which  produced  it.1 

1  A  closer  insight  reveals  immediately  that  the  remarkable  confusion 
of  thought  and  theory  which  marks  the  period  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, results  largely  from  the  fact  that  we  find  the  theorists  in  various 
stages  of  a  transition,  from  the  fundamental  assumption  underlying  the 
principles  of  Hobbes  and  Locke,  which  was  destined  to  be  fully  accom- 
plished only  at  a  later  period.  Excepting  Turgot,  most  of  the  Ency- 
clopaedists may  be  regarded  as  thinkers  who  regarded  the  concepts  of 
the  system  of  belief  associated  with  our  civilisation  as  having  no  mean- 
ing which  extended  beyond  the  range  of  political  consciousness.  But 
in  Rousseau  we  have  an  intermediate  stage  of  great  interest,  in  which 
the  nature  of  the  process  that  is  proceeding  is  revealed  with  great 
clearness.  Rousseau  went  so  far  in  one  direction  that  he  wished  to 
have  an  established  political  religion.  "The  tenets  of  political  re- 
ligion," he  said,  "  should  be  few  and  simple  ;  they  should  be  laid 
down  with  precision  and  without  comment.  The  existence  of  a  deity, 
powerful,  intelligent,  beneficent,  prescient,  and  provident ;  a  future 
state,  the  reward  of  the  righteous,  the  punishment  of  the  wicked,  the 
sacred  nature  of  the  social  contract  and  of  the  laws  —  these  should  be 
its  positive  tenets.  As  to  negative  dogmas,  1  limit  them  to  one  —  it  is 
intolerance.  Those  who  affect  to  make  a  distinction  between  civil  and 
religious  intolerance  are  in  my  opinion  mistaken.  These  two  intoler- 
ances are  inseparable.  It  is  impossible  to  live  in  peace  with  those 
whom  we  firmly  believe  devoted  to  damnation  ;  to  love  them  would 
be  to  hate  God  who  punishes  them.  It  is  therefore  absolutely  neces- 
sary for  us  either  to  torment  or  to  convert  them.  Wherever  theo- 
logical intolerance  is  admitted,  it  is  impossible  that  it  should  not  have 
some  civil  effect ;  and  so  soon  as  it  has,  the  sovereign  is  no  longer 
sovereign  even  in  secular  matters  ;  the  priests  become  the  real  masters, 


IV  WESTERN   LIBERALISM  121 

In  the  growing  light  of  the  time  in  which  we  are 
living,  it  is  of  the  highest  interest  to  note  a  solitary 
form  which  stands  out  in  bold  relief  against  the  back- 
ground of  events  in  this  period  of  transition.  It  is 
the  figure  of  Burke,  to  whom  the  modern  mind  in 
England  has  already  begun  to  turn  with  instinctive 
perception  of  the  relation  to  a  coming  epoch  of  know- 
ledge of  the  message  of  which  he  struggled  to  deliver 
himself  in  the  period  of  the  French  Revolution.  Burke 
has  been  continually  charged  by  critics  with  inconsist- 
ency. He  is  pointed  to  at  one  stage  of  his  career  as 
applauding  the  principles  of  Locke  in  the  Revolution 
in  America.  We  are  called  to  witness  him  later  stand- 
ing, a  commanding  figure,  denouncing  with  a  passion- 
ate eloquence,  almost  beyond  the  measure  of  anything 
else  of  the  kind  in  literature,  what  to  many  minds 
appeared  to  be  exactly  the  same  principles  expressed 

and  kings  are  only  their  officers  "  (  The  Social  Contract).  Most  writers 
who  have  dealt  with  this  passage  have  noted  only  the  inconsistency 
involved,  or  the  hostility  of  Rousseau  to  the  Church  in  France.  But 
the  student  of  the  development  of  social  theory  finds  in  it  a  much 
deeper  interest  than  this.  For,  in  the  doctrine  of  the  prescription  of 
religious  principles  on  account  of  their  civil  effects,  we  have  to  distin- 
guish a  midway  stage  in  a  development  which  was  henceforward  to 
follow  widely  diverging  lines.  Along  one  characteristic  line,  as  we 
shall  see  later,  the  theory  of  the  political  State  was  to  be  developed 
apart  from  the  theory  of  religion  and  absolute  ethics  ;  along  the  other 
line  there  was  to  be  the  frank  return  to  the  standpoint  of  the  ancient 
world,  the  controlling  centre  of  consciousness  being  once  more  placed 
in  the  midst  of  the  existing  civil  organisation.  Rousseau's  intermediate 
position  may  with  advantage  be  compared  with  that  developed  later  in 
modern  Marxian  socialism,  where,  the  centre  of  social  consciousness 
being  now  avowedly  posited  in  the  existing  political  organisation,  the 
subject  of  religion  is  logically  eliminated,  and  the  stage  of  antagonism 
to  the  principle  which  is  subordinating  the  present  to  the  future  is 
clearly  defined. 


122  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

in  the  Revolution  in  France.  "A  light  of  great 
wisdom,"  says  Sir  Frederick  Pollock  finely,  "  shines 
in  almost  everything  of  Burke's  making,  but  it  is  a 
diffused  light  of  which  the  focus  is  not  revealed,  but 
only  conjectured."  l  We  are  beginning  to  understand 
now  something  of  the  profound  social  instinct  from 
which  this  illumination  proceeds,  as  well  as  to  per- 
ceive the  character  of  the  principle  Burke  had  in 
sight,  which  reconciles  the  apparent  contradiction 
here  described. 

Burke  unmistakably  gave  voice  in  English  thought 
to  a  conviction,  widespread,  deep,  and  sincere,  which 
has  never  since  ceased  to  be  representative  both  in 
England  and  the  United  States  of  the  most  char- 
acteristic  of  all  forces  behind  the  phenomenon  of 
Western  Liberalism,  namely,  the  conviction  that  the 
principles  of  Democracy,  formulated  as  they  were  in 
the  French  Revolution  (that  is  to  say,  as  a  theory  of 
the  interests  of  the  political  State,  resting  logically 
on  the  materialistic  interpretation  of  history),  are  not 
only  different  from  the  principles  of  Western  Liber- 
alism which  have  come  down  through  Locke  and  the 
English  and  American  Revolutions ;  but  that  they 
are  not,  and  never  can  be,  the  principles  of  that 
Democracy  which  our  civilisation  is  destined  to  carry 
forward  to  ultimate  fruition. 

As  we,  therefore,  turn  over  the  pages  of  Burke 
at  the  present  day  in  the  light  of  the  position  out- 
lined beneath  the  modern  evolutionary  development, 
it  is  impossible  to  resist  a  feeling  of  profound  sur- 
prise. For  Burke,  we  see,  had,  even  at  the  date  in 
question,  risen  to  the  height  of  perceiving  society  as 

1  History  of  the  Science  of  Politics,  by  Sir  Frederick  Pollock,  p.  86. 


IV  WESTERN   LIBERALISM  123 

science  will  undoubtedly  perceive  it  in  the  future  — 
that  is  to  say,  as  a  living  and  developing  organism, 
the  centre  of  whose  life  amongst  the  progressive 
peoples  can  nevermore  be  in  the  present  time,  and 
the  science  of  whose  life  can,  therefore,  nevermore 
be  regarded  as  the  science  of  the  interests  of  the 
present  time  or  of  the  existing  political  State.  We 
see  Burke,  accordingly,  propounding  the  doctrine, 
already  becoming  strange  to  the  theorists  of  the 
French  Revolution,  that  even  the  whole  people  have 
no  right  to  make  a  law  prejudicial  to  the  whole  com- 
munity. We  see  him,  therefore,  vehemently  assert- 
ing, as  against  the  prevailing  theories  of  his  time, 
that  society  could  never  be  considered  as  a  mere 
partnership  for  the  mutual  profit  of  its  existing  mem- 
bers. For  "society,"  as  he  declared,  was  a  "part- 
nership, not  only  between  those  who  are  living,  but 
between  those  who  are  living  and  those  who  are  dead, 
and  those  who  are  to  be  born."  Nay  more,  we  see 
him  speaking  of  the  "social  contract  "  itself  as  a  con- 
tract which,  if  it  ever  existed,  could  be  no  more  than 
"a  clause  in  the  great  contract  of  eternal  society."1 

1  "  Society,"  said  Burke,  "  is,  indeed,  a  contract.  Subordinate  con- 
tracts for  objects  of  mere  occasional  interest  may  be  dissolved  at  pleas- 
ure; but  the  State  ought  not  to  be  considered  as  nothing  better  than 
a  partnership  agreement  in  a  trade  of  pepper  and  coffee,  calico  or 
tobacco,  or  some  other  such  low  concern,  to  be  taken  up  for  a  little 
temporary  interest,  and  to  be  dissolved  by  the  fancy  of  the  parties.  It 
is  to  be  looked  on  with  other  reverence,  because  it  is  not  a  partnership 
in  things  subservient  only  to  the  gross  animal  existence  of  a  temporary 
and  perishable  nature.  It  is  a  partnership  in  all  science,  a  partnership 
in  all  art,  a  partnership  in  every  virtue  and  in  all  perfection.  As  the  ends 
of  such  a  partnership  cannot  be  obtained  in  many  generations,  it  becomes 
a  partnership  not  only  between  those  who  are  living,  but  between  those 
who  arc  living  and  those  who  are  dead,  and  those  who  are  to  be  born  " 


124  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

As  we  follow  from  this  period  forward  through  the 
nineteenth  century  the  history  of  the  movement  in 
thought  which,  with  gradually  increasing  concentra- 
tion, has  endeavoured  to  express  the  meaning  of  the 
social  process  in  Western  history  by  a  mere  theory  of 
the  political  State,  the  result  appears  striking  in  the 
last  degree.  Although,  as  we  shall  see  later,  it  is 
impossible  on  a  review  of  history  to  resist  the  con- 
clusion that  the  course  of  political  development,  both 
in  England  and  the  United  States,  during  the  nine- 
teenth century,  did  not  cease  to  be  controlled  and 
directed  at  every  point  by  the  profound  conviction  to 
which  Burke  gave  utterance — the  conviction  that  the 
principles  of  Democracy,  which  find  their  ultimate 
expression  in  the  materialistic  interpretation  of  his- 
tory, are  not  the  principles  of  that  Democracy  which 
our  civilisation  is  destined  to  realise  —  yet  there  is 
to  be  found  no  accepted  synthesis  of  knowledge  in 
which  this  conviction  attained  to  scientific  expression. 
We  have  in  sight  in  England  for  nearly  a  century  the 
remarkable  spectacle  of  the  almost  complete  disap- 
pearance beneath  the  surface  of  thought  of  that  great 
stream  of  tendency  which  is  carrying  our  civilisation 
forward,  and  the  rise,  first  of  all  into  ascendency, 
and  then  into  close  and  authoritative  association  with 
the  theory  of  Liberalism,  of  that  utilitarian  school 
of  social  and  moral  philosophy  described  in  the  last 
chapter. 

In  the  absence  of  such  a  synthesis,  it  may  be  ob- 
served that  it  is  everywhere  the  conception  of  the 

{Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France,  and  on  the  Proceedings  in 
Certain  Societies  in  London  relative  to  that  Event,  by  the  Right  Hon- 
ourable Edmund  Burke,  1790). 


nr  WESTERN  LIBERALISM  125 

political  State  alone  —  the  conception  of  its  economic 
and  business  welfare,  and  of  the  ascendency  of  the 
interests  of  the  individuals  comprising  it  —  which  is 
presented,  in  the  prevailing  school  of  English  thought, 
as  the  science  of  society.  In  that  long  utilitarian  move- 
ment, described  in  the  last  chapter  as  more  and  more 
closely  identifying  itself  throughout  the  nineteenth 
century  with  the  philosophy  of  Liberalism  in  Eng- 
land, it  is  the  theory  of  the  ascendency  of  the  interests 
of  the  present  which  has  become  the  whole  science 
of  society.  In  the  movement  which  extends  from 
Hume  and  Adam  Smith,  almost  down  into  the  time 
in  which  we  are  living,  we  have,  as  we  saw  in  the 
last  chapter,  all  the  steps,  in  which  this  transition  has 
been  accomplished,  clearly  before  us. 

As  this  movement  expresses  itself  at  last  in  Eng- 
land in  the  writings  of  John  Stuart  Mill  and  Herbert 
Spencer,  the  theory  of  the  ascendency  of  the  present 
has  become  absolute.  The  evolutionist  sees  that  the 
ruling  meaning  of  the  social  process  in  Western  his- 
tory must  be  that  of  a  process  in  which  the  present 
is  being  subordinated  to  the  future.  Yet  in  Mill's 
conception  of  progress  it  is  the  ideal  of  the  ascendant 
present  in  a  stationary  State  which  is  set  before  us 
as  the  snmmmn  bonum  in  political  development.  We 
see  the  restriction  of  population  advocated  by  means 
of  prudential  restraints  ;  the  rivalry  of  the  modern 
State  condemned  because  of  its  "  unpleasantness  "  to 
the  individual ;  the  theory  of  internal  politics  and  of 
international  relations  expressed  in  a  conception  of 
business  interests  in  the  State;  and  the  whole  mean- 
ing of  the  social  process  in  history  summed  up  in  the 
contemplation  of  the  movement  of  the  world  towards 


126  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

an  ideal  in  which  laws  and  social  arrangement  shall 
at  last  bring  the  interests  of  society  as  a  whole  into 
harmony  with  the  enlightened  self-interest  of  all  the 
individuals  comprised  within  the  limits  of  the  existing 
political  State.  Similarly  in  the  political  philosophy 
of  Mr.  Spencer  it  is  only  the  aspect  of  progress  as  a 
struggle  between  the  present  and  the  past  that  we 
have  continually  in  sight.  Of  the  larger  and  charac- 
teristic significance  of  the  historical  process  in  West- 
ern society  as  that  of  a  struggle  between  the  present 
and  the  future  there  is  no  perception.  The  meaning 
of  the  political  development  which  has  carried  our 
civilisation  towards  the  principles  of  Western  Lib- 
eralism presents  itself,  therefore,  to  Mr.  Spencer  as 
capable  of  being  all  included,  as  we  saw,  in  a  mere 
theory  according  to  which  existing  social  interests 
are  to  be  considered  as  passing  out  from  under  the 
control  of  the  past,  towards  an  organisation  of  society 
in  which  a  conciliation  is  to  take  place  between  the 
interests  of  each  and  the  interests  of  all ;  and  in 
which  the  interests  of  the  present  are  to  be  at  last 
ascendant  and  supreme  in  every  particular. 

As  we  look  back  at  last,  from  the  level  of  our  own 
time,  over  the  history  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the 
interest  in  this  remarkable  development  in  Western 
thought  culminates.  Under  a  multitude  of  forms  we 
see  that  the  movement  in  social  philosophy  has,  in 
reality,  run  its  course  as  the  complement  and  supple- 
ment of  corresponding  theories  in  the  domain  of 
moral  philosophy  and  of  religion.  In  the  correspond- 
ing theory  in  moral  philosophy  the  tendency  has 
been  to  assert  that  in  the  last  resort  human  conduct 
requires  no  principle  of  support  whatever  other  than 


iv  WESTERN  LIBERALISM  127 

that  of  self-interest  in  society  well  understood.  In 
the  corresponding  theory  in  religion,  the  tendency 
has  accordingly  been  to  assert,  with  equal  emphasis, 
that  the  tendency  of  the  evolutionary  process  in 
human  history  is  to  empty  the  concepts  of  the  system 
of  belief  associated  with  our  civilisation  of  that  dis- 
tinctive quality  which  projects  their  significance  be- 
yond the  limits  of  political  consciousness.  Under  all 
three  forms  we  are  regarding,  we  see,  but  the  differ- 
ent and  closely  related  phases  of  a  single  movement 
in  Western  history.  The  fundamental  conception 
underlying  them  all  is  the  same.  It  is  the  concep- 
tion that  it  is  possible  to  express  the  meaning  of  our 
social  evolution,  just  as  it  was  expressed  in  the  civ- 
ilisations of  the  ancient  Greek  and  Roman  world, 
namely,  by  a  mere  theory  of  human  interests  com- 
prised within  the  limits  of  political  consciousness. 

In  France  of  the  present  day  it  is  impossible  to 
come  into  contact  with  the  higher  thought  of  the 
nation  at  any  point  without  feeling  how  completely 
that  unanalysed  element,  which  in  the  theories  of 
Hobbes  and  Locke  had  projected  the  controlling 
principles  of  society  outside  the  limits  of  political 
consciousness,  has  been  eliminated  from  the  syn- 
thesis of  knowledge  associated  with  the  theory  of 
Western  Liberalism.  In  the  current  life  of  the 
French  people  all  those  sociological  symptoms  which 
attract  the  attention  of  observers ;  the  grave  symp- 
toms which  accompany  the  phenomenon  of  depopula- 
tion, on  the  one  hand  ;  the  still  graver  symptoms 
which  are  associated  with  the  ascendency  of  the 
conception  of  the  political  State  as  expressing  itself 
under  the  ethics  of  militarism,  on  the  other,  may  be 


128  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

summed  up  in  a  single  sentence.  They  are  the 
symptoms  of  a  people  in  whom  the  social  conscious- 
ness is,  as  it  were,  in  process  of  slow  contraction 
upon  itself,  and,  therefore,  of  a  people  in  whom  that 
consciousness  is  again  tending,  as  in  the  ancient 
civilisations,  to  be  no  longer  projected  beyond  the 
principles  and  interests  of  political  society. 

In  the  position  towards  which  evolutionary  science 
has  carried  us,  we  see  the  race  being  lifted  forward 
by  irresistible  causes  towards  a  condition  in  which 
the  consciousness  of  the  winning  sections  must  be 
more  and  more  surely  projected  beyond  the  plane  of 
merely  political  consciousness  ;  toward  a  condition  in 
which  a  political  consciousness  is,  beyond  doubt, 
destined,  in  the  end,  to  be  transformed  into  a  cosmic 
consciousness.  Yet  in  recent  French  thought  it  may 
be  observed  on  all  hands  how  the  tendency  sets  in 
the  opposite  direction.  We  observe  a  thinker  like 
Renan  surveying  the  problems  of  the  modern  world 
with  a  scarcely  concealed  consciousness  of  a  troubled 
future,  and  yet  with  so  little  perception  of  the  mean- 
ing of  the  great  process  of  life  which  has  culminated 
in  the  forms  of  Western  Democracy,  that  he  seems 
to  have  no  clearer  message  to  deliver  than  that  reli- 
gious beliefs  are  a  surviving  phenomenon  destined  to 
die  slowly  out,  undermined  by  primary  instruction.1 
We  observe  a  writer  like  Arsene  Dumont  viewing 
with  concern  in  modern  France  that  result,  which 
Mill  and  leaders  of  the  Manchester  school  actually 
wished  to  see  accomplished  in  England,  namely,  the 
general  restriction  of  births.  We  see  him  discussing 
the  ominous  phenomenon  of  the  resulting  depopula- 

1  Studies  in  Religious  History. 


rv  WESTERN  LIBERALISM  129 

tion  and  the  consequent  failure  of  the  French  people 
to  preserve  their  ancient  place  in  our  civilisation  ; 
and  yet  seeking  to  carry  forward  his  analysis  of  the 
condition  of  his  times  only  to  the  assertion  that  "  des 
deux  termes  de  la  contradiction  entre  la  democratic 
et  la  [religion,  c'est  bien  ce  dernier  qui  doit  etre  eli- 
min6." x  We  see  the  development  in  modern  thought 
which  began  with  Darwin  more  and  more  surely  pre- 
senting the  history  of  the  evolutionary  process  in 
human  society  as  the  history  of  the  conceptions 
which  are  subordinating  the  individual  and  society 
alike  to  the  meaning  of  a  process  infinite  in  the 
future;  and  yet  have  to  observe  this  writer  with 
nothing  better  to  offer  the  mind  of  modern  France 
than  the  conclusion  that  "  1'hypothese  Dieu  est  insou- 
tenable  et  d'elle-meme  s'elimine  par  la  seule  action 
des  causes  qui  1'ont  produite."2  M.  Dumont  sees 
perfectly  clearly  the  relation  to  the  problem  with 
which  he  is  struggling,  of  the  fact  that  "l'homme 
sait  fort  ais^ment  eViter  la  fecondit6  en  conservant 
le  plaisir."3  But  of  the  relationship  of  the  same 
principle  of  the  ascendency  of  the  present  to  the 
problem  in  the  great  evolutionary  drama  in  progress 
in  Western  history  he  has  no  conception.  In  current 
French  thought,  "1'hypothese  Dieu  s'elimine."  And 
so  in  France,  in  the  theory  of  society  which  accom- 
panies the  conception,  it  has  come  about  that,  to  use 
the  words  of  Paul  Leroy-Beaulieu — "the  State  re- 
mains the  sole  God  of  the  modern  world."4 

But  it  is  in  Germany  of  the  present  day  that  the 

1  Depopulation  et  Civilisation,  par  ArsSne  Dumont,  c.  xxv. 

2  Ibid.  •  Ibid.  p.  31. 

4  L'Atat  Moderne  et  ses  Fonftions,  par  Paul  Leroy-Bcaulieu,  p.  18. 
K 


130  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

movement  in  modern  thought,  which  has  presented 
the  meaning  of  Western  Liberalism  as  a  theory  of 
material  interests  within  the  limits  of  political  con- 
sciousness, has  obtained  the  clearest  definition,  and 
already  reached  the  inevitable  stage  at  which  it  has 
begun  to  develop  its  own  antithesis.  On  the  one 
side  of  this  movement  in  Germany  of  the  present 
day  we  have  the  Marx-Engels  theory  of  modern 
society.  Hitherto  general  attention  has  been  so 
closely  occupied  with  the  economic  aspect  of  Marxian 
socialism  that  the  fact  of  first  importance  connected 
with  it  has  received  little  attention.  This  is  that 
Marxian  socialism  is  not  merely,  or  even  chiefly,  an 
economic  theory,  but  rather  a  complete  self-contained 
philosophy  of  human  life  and  society.  In  Marx's 
theories  of  society  those  fundamental  assumptions 
upon  which  the  principles  of  Democracy  were,  in  the 
last  resort,  made  to  rest  in  the  theories  of  Locke, 
have  completely  disappeared.  For  there  is  now,  to 
use  the  words  of  Mr.  Russell,  "no  question  of  justice 
or  virtue,  no  appeal  to  human  sympathy  or  morality  ; 
might  alone  is  right,  communism  is  justified  by  its 
inevitable  victory."  Marx  "rests  his  doctrine  not 
on  'justice'  preached  by  Utopia-mongers  (as  he  calls 
his  Socialist  predecessors),  not  a  sentimental  love  of 
man,  which  he  never  mentions  without  immeasur- 
able scorn,  but  on  historical  necessity  alone,  on  the 
blind  growth  of  productive  forces,  which  must  in  the 
end  swallow  up  the  capitalist."  l  Social  Democracy 
in  Germany  "denies  wholly  and  unreservedly  any 
spiritual  purpose  in  the  universe."  It  is  optimistic 

1  German  Social  Democracy,  by  Bertrand  Russell,  p.  14. 


IV  WESTERN   LIBERALISM  13! 

simply  because  it  believes  in  a  better  world  now  and 
here.1  In  the  movement  represented  by  John  Stuart 
Mill  in  the  middle  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century 
in  England  there  was  lacking  what  may  be  termed 
the  full  intellectual  consistency  which  was  necessary 
to  carry  its  principles  to  their  complete  logical  devel- 
opment. But  in  Marx  this  has  been  supplied,  and 
the  inherent  and  inevitable  attitude  of  antagonism  to 
the  whole  system  of  religious  belief  on  which  our  civ- 
ilisation is  founded  is  at  length  clearly  in  sight. 

There  has  been  reached,  in  short,  the  stage  of 
frank  political  materialism.  It  is  not  by  accident 
therefore,  but  of  strict  logical  necessity,  that  we  find 
the  Sozialdemokrat  anticipating  in  Germany,  with 
Arsene  Dumont  in  France,  the  day  when  "1'hypo- 
these  Dieu  "  shall  be  "  expelled  from  human  brains." 
For  it  is  inherent  in  the  Marxian  position,  that  in  a 
condition  of  society  in  which  the  interests  of  the 
present  are  considered  as  in  the  ascendant ;  in  which, 
therefore,  the  economic  factor  is  conceived  as  the 
ruling  factor  in  human  history  ;  and  in  which,  conse- 
quently, the  sphere  of  law,  morality,  and  economic 
action  are  coincident  and  co-extensive; — there  should 
be  absolutely  no  place  or  meaning  for  the  principles 
and  conceptions  by  which,  if  the  meaning  of  the 
evolutionary  process  as  presented  in  the  preceding 
chapters  be  not  entirely  misinterpreted,  the  present 
and  all  its  interests  are  to  be  conceived  as  being  subor- 
dinated to  the  ends  of  a  process  of  which  the  control- 
ling meaning  is  infinite  in  the  future.2  The  world, 

1  op.  dt.  p.  94. 

*  Marx  considered  religion  destined  to  finally  vanish  when  social  re- 
lations became  reasonable  according  to  his  view.  Although  the  sixth 


132  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

as  has  been  said,  has  been  hitherto  occupied  for  the 
most  part  with  economic  criticisms  of  the  manifestoes 
of  Marxian  social  Democracy.  Nothing,  however, 
can  exhibit  in  a  more  striking  light  the  deficiency  in 
the  existing  science  of  society.  All  such  criticism  is 
in  reality  beside  the  question.  For  the  full  criticism 
of  the  Marxian  position  cannot  be  put  into  any 
merely  economic  formulas.1  A  condition  of  social 

clause  of  the  demands  of  the  social  democratic  party  of  Germany  in 
the  programme  of  the  Congress  of  Erfurt  (1891)  contains  a  declara- 
tion that  religion  is  a  private  affair,  we  must  regard  this  as  no  more 
than  evidence  that  the  previously  avowed  standpoint  of  the  party  in 
this  matter  was  felt  to  be  a  tactical  mistake  in  practical  politics.  No 
close  student  of  Marx,  and  of  the  existing  movement,  can  fail  to  see 
that  not  simply  is  the  condition  of  dissociation  implied,  but  that  the 
principle  of  direct  antagonism  is  necessarily  involved.  As  Mr.  Rus- 
sell, speaking  of  the  history  of  the  social  democratic  movement  in 
Germany,  points  out,  "At  the  annual  congress  of  1872  a  resolution  was 
passed,  desiring  all  members  of  the  party  to  withdraw  from  religious 
organisations,  and,  from  this  time  on,  the  attitude  of  the  party  has 
been  avowedly  hostile  to  all  existing  religions.  It  is  sufficiently  evident 
that  the  materialistic  theory  of  history  leaves  no  room  for  religion 
since  it  regards  all  dogmas  as  the  product  of  economic  conditions " 
(German  Social  Democracy). 

1  The  present  writer  has  shown  at  length  elsewhere  (Social  Evolu- 
tion, chap,  viii.)  that  the  factor  in  modern  life  which  has  enabled  Marx 
to  anticipate  the  growing  power  of  the  workers,  and  to  picture  a  stage  at 
which  they  will  proceed  to  seize  and  socialise  the  means  of  production, 
is  entirely  independent  of  the  economic  situation.  The  real  factor  is 
that  the  exploited  classes,  as  the  result  of  the  ethical  development  as- 
sociated with  our  civilisation,  are  being  slowly  admitted  to  the  exercise 
of  political  power  on  a  footing  which  tends  more  and  more  to  be  one  of 
actual  equality  with  those  who  have  hitherto  held  them  in  subjection. 
The  materialistic  evolution  of  Marx  depends,  in  short,  for  its  motive 
power  on  a  movement  of  which  Marx  would  cut  off  the  springs  by  the 
materialistic  theory  of  history.  Mr.  Russell,  who  has  since  dealt  with 
this  aspect  of  the  Marxian  movement,  puts  the  position  quite  clearly, 
"  A  great  confusion  thus  arises  between  Marx's  wholly  unmoral  fatal- 
ism, and  the  purely  moral  demand  for  justice  and  equality  on  the  part 


iv  WESTERN  LIBERALISM  133 

Democracy,  founded  on  the  materialistic  interpreta- 
tion of  history,  carries  with  it  in  its  bosom  its  own 
answer  and  its  own  final  criticism. 

It  is  modern  Germany  which  has  given  the  world 
the  first  glimpse  of  the  nature  of  the  real  answer  — 
as  that  answer  must  be  enacted  in  history  —  to  a 
theory  of  social  Democracy  founded,  in  actual  prac- 
tice, on  the  materialistic  interpretation  of  history.  In 
modern  Germany  Nietzsche,  equally  with  the  Sozial- 
demokrat  and  Arsene  Dumont,  anticipates  the  day 
when  "  1'hypothese  Dieu "  shall  be  expelled  from 
human  brains.  Like  Marx,  he  regards  the  form  of 
religious  belief  on  which  our  civilisation  is  founded 
as  a  cause  associated  with  existing  economic  condi- 
tions. Progress  to  him  also  is  a  gradual  emancipation 
from  the  system  of  morality  proceeding  from  that 
belief.  But  here  Nietzsche  once  and  for  ever  parts 
company  with  the  "scientific  socialist."  It  continues 
to  be  the  same  materialistic  interpretation  of  history. 
But  the  application  is  different.  "  The  great  Euro- 
pean narcotic  of  Christianity  " 1  is  associated  with 
the  existing  order  of  things.  Only  too  true,  asserts 
Nietzsche  in  effect.  It  has  enabled  the  serf  popula- 
tion in  our  civilisation  to  invent  a  "  slave  morality," 
to  enlist  sympathy,  to  obtain  votes,  to  slowly  gain 
predominance  over  their  natural  and  destined  supe- 
riors. What  is  this  ideal  of  "sympathy  and  brotherly 

of  his  followers.  This  confusion  could  not  fail  to  arise,  for  Marx's  fa- 
talism is  based  on  the  moral  ideas  of  the  proletariat  and  their  neces- 
•ary  victory;  proletariat  disciples  of  Marx,  therefore,  as  soon  as  they 
work  for  the  realisation  of  his  theories,  are  forced  to  rest  their  claims 
on  those  very  moral  ideas  which  formed  Marx's/!/rfr"  (p.  167). 

1  The  Twilight  of  the  Idols,  the  works  of  Friedrick  Nietzsche,  trans- 
lated by  Thomas  Common,  p.  155. 


134  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

love  "  made  by  Western  Liberalism  to  support  these 
movements  of  the  modern  world  ?  asks  Nietzsche 
in  effect.  Mere  contemptible  consideration  for  the 
inferior,  is  the  reply ;  mere  lack  of  self-assertion  in 
the  natural  superior.  What  is  our  Western  Liberal- 
ism at  best  ?  Increased  herding  animality.  What  is 
Democracy  itself  ?  A  declining  type  of  the  State  in 
which  the  natural  superior  is  enslaved  with  sympathies 
so  that  he  may  be  kept  out  of  his  own.1 

Turning  with  fierce  and  concentrated  scorn  from 
all  the  ideals  and  tendencies  which  express  themselves 
in  modern  Democracy  in  Germany,  Nietzsche  delivers, 
as  it  were,  to  the  occupying  classes  the  gospel  for 
them  of  the  materialistic  interpretation  of  history. 
"A  new  table,  O  my  brethren,  I  put  over  you.  Be- 
come hard."  2  No  more  weak  parleying  about  the  rights 
of  man,  those  empty  formulas  of  a  religion  of  which  we 
have  given  up  the  substance.  We  are  in  possession, 
we  are  the  superiors,  we  are  the  strongest.  "The  best 
things  belong  to  me  and  mine,  and  if  men  give  us 
nothing  then  we  take  them ;  the  best  food,  the  purest 
sky,  the  strongest  thoughts,  the  fairest  women."  3 

In  modern  literature  no  man  of  international  repu- 
tation except  Nietzsche  has  yet  dared  to  utter  such 
thoughts  so  directly.  Nevertheless  they  all,  equally 
with  the  anticipations  of  Marx,  proceed  from  the 
materialistic  interpretation  of  history  —  from  the 
interpretation  of  the  world  in  terms  of  the  ruling 
interests  of  the  present.  They  are  the  convictions, 
however,  which  express  themselves,  not  in  treatises 
on  the  relations  of  capital  and  labour,  not  in  discus- 

1  Op.  cit.  pp.  200-210  ;  and  The  Antichrist,  pp.  241-246. 

2  The  Twilight  of  the  Idols,  p.  235.  8  Zarathustra. 


iv  WESTERN   LIBERALISM  135 

sions  as  to  the  ethical  claims  of  the  recipients  of  sur- 
plus-value ;  but  in  the  fulness  of  time,  through  all  the 
avenues  of  power  and  authority  in  the  State  in  which 
progress  towards  the  materialistic  interpretation  of 
history  has  already  in  practice  begun. 

The  imagination  halts,  falters,  and  turns  back  on  its 
task  as  there  rises  before  it  the  picture  of  the  modern 
world  in  which  the  demands  of  social  Democracy  tend 
thus  to  be  met  by  the  occupying  classes  in  the  same 
spirit  in  which  they  are  made  by  Marx ;  when  through 
all  the  corporations  which  regulate  the  produce  of  the 
worker ;  when  through  all  the  trusts  and  organisations 
of  capital  which  control  not  only  the  activities  of 
industry,  but  the  organs  of  public  opinion  and  even 
the  acts  of  public  authority ;  nay,  when,  in  the  last 
resort,  through  the  vast  machine  of  militarism  itself, 
there  comes  the  same  terrible  whisper  uttered  now  in 
the  strength  of  resolved  conviction  :  "  Be  hard,  O  my 
brethren.  For  we  are  emancipated.  The  world 
belongs  to  us.  We  are  the  strongest.  And  if  men 
do  not  give  us  these  things  we  take  them.  It  is 
the  materialistic  interpretation  of  history." 

Only  the  evolutionist  realises  to  the  full  the  nature 
of  the  soil  upon  which  this  teaching  of  Nietzsche  falls 
in  our  Western  world.  Only  in  his  ears  there  sounds 
down  the  corridors  of  time  the  full  meaning  of  the 
aeons  in  the  past.  For  it  is  we,  the  ruling  classes  of  the 
ruling  races  of  the  Western  world,  who  are  survivors 
in  our  own  stern  right.  It  is  We  who  have  come  out 
of  the  countless  ages  of  a  world-process  of  military 
selection  wherein  the  present  was  always  in  the 
ascendant ;  wherein  might  alone  was  always  indefea- 
sible right ;  wherein  the  interpretation  of  history  was 


136  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

always  materialistic.  If  this,  indeed,  be  all  the 
import  of  two  thousand  years  of  our  civilisation,  the 
meaning  of  its  stress  and  suffering,  the  end  of  its 
ideals  of  self-sacrifice  before  which  we  have  agonised  : 
then  be  it  so.  Who,  then,  amongst  us  does  not 
already  feel  his  nostrils  dilate  and  his  pagan  heart 
swell  against  his  bosom  at  the  very  insolence  of  the 
demands  which  the  claims  of  Western  Liberalism 
imply.  To  your  tents,  O  Israel !  What  inheritance 
have  we  in  the  "  sympathies  "  which  enslave  us  !  We 
are  the  superiors.  We  are  the  stronger.  A  new 
commandment,  O  my  brethren,  I  put  over  you. 
Become  hard.  It  is  the  materialistic  interpretation 
of  history ! 

And  so  our  survey  has  reached  the  horizon. 
Looking  back  over  the  course  of  the  evolutionary 
process  in  human  society,  and  then '  concentrating 
attention  on  the  phases  of  thought  which  have  just 
been  considered,  it  seems  impossible  to  resist  the 
conclusion  which  presents  itself.  Theories  and 
discussions  as  to  the  economics  of  the  modern  world 
only  serve  to  disguise  the  underlying  fact  of  central 
significance  in  the  developments  we  have  followed ; 
namely,  the  retreat  which  has  taken  place  all  along 
the  line  to  the  standpoint  of  the  ancient  world.  The 
controlling  meaning  of  the  evolutionary  process  in 
human  society  is  in  all  of  them  once  more  frankly 
and  avowedly  posited  within  the  bounds  of  political 
consciousness.  In  none  of  the  developments  that 
have  been  passed  in  review  is  there,  in  short,  to  be 
distinguished  the  claim  by  which  Western  Liberalism 
can  alone  be  justified  as  the  controlling  principle  of 
progress  in  the  modern  world,  namely,  its  claim  to 


iv  WESTERN  LIBERALISM  137 

project  the  meaning  of  the  social  process  in  Western 
history  beyond  all  theories  of  the  State,  economic  or 
political,  beyond  the  content  of  all  theories  whatever 
of  interests  in  the  present. 

In  France  of  the  present  day  we  appear  to  have, 
neither  in  the  Revolution  nor  in  the  counter-revolu- 
tion, any  synthesis  of  thought  which  can  be  said  to 
represent  the  characteristic  meaning  of  our  Western 
civilisation.  In  the  Revolution  we  appear  to  see  only 
M.  Dumont's  contradiction,  "la  democratic  et  la  re- 
ligion," with  the  conviction  in  the  mind  of  its  expo- 
nents that  of  these  two  terms  "it  is  indeed  the 
latter  which  must  be  eliminated."  And  in  the 
counter-revolution,  so  far  as  it  exists  in  France,  we 
appear  to  be  only  carried  back  to  the  principles  of 
society  as  these  were  presented  in  mediaeval  Europe 
before  the  upheaval  which  created  the  modern 
world. 

In  Germany,  as  in  England,  the  great  movement 
of  thought  which  produced  such  transforming  results 
in  the  sixteenth  century  has  continued  to  run  its 
course.  But  we  may  already  dimly  perceive  how 
profoundly  the  interpretation  of  that  movement 
already  differs  in  modern  Germany  and  in  modern 
England.  As  we  shall  see  clearly  later,  it  has 
begun  to  flow  in  those  two  countries  in  widely 
different  channels,  the  courses  of  which  are  tending 
to  be  increasingly  divergent.  In  Germany  both 
the  Revolution  and  the  counter-revolution  have 
tended  to  reach  their  current  expression  in  con- 
ceptions of  the  omnipotence  of  the  political  State. 
In  the  Revolution  which  has  found  its  current  ex- 
pression in  Marxian  social  Democracy,  resting  on  the 


138  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

materialistic  interpretation  of  history,  one  of  the 
terms  of  M.  Dumont's  contradiction  is  already 
practically  eliminated.  And  in  the  counter-revolu- 
tion, as  represented  in  modern  Germany,  it  is 
Democracy  itself  which  is  tending  to  be  eliminated.1 
In  England  and  the  United  States  we  have,  in 
reality,  neither  the  Revolution  nor  the  counter-revo- 
lution. The  great  stream  of  tendency  which  is  car- 
rying development  forward  has  simply  disappeared 
beneath  the  surface  of  intellectual  life  in  both  coun- 
tries. Deep  down  in  the  minds  of  the  people,  both 
in  England  and  the  United  States,  there  may  be 
distinguished  once  more  the  same  conviction  which 
found  expression  in  Burke  in  the  period  of  the  French 
Revolution.  Deeper  than  any  theory  of  Liberalism 
in  the  past,  deeper  than  any  intellectual  perception 
in  the  present,  there  is  still  to  be  found,  throughout 
the  whole  English-speaking  world,  the  immovable 
conviction  that  the  life-principles  of  Western  Lib- 
eralism transcend  the  meaning  of  all  theories  what- 
ever of  business,  economic,  or  material  interests  in 
the  political  State ;  and  that  the  principles  of  the 
Democracy  which  our  civilisation  is  destined  to  realise 

1  The  pressing  need  above  all  others  in  modern  Germany  is,  says 
Mr.  Russell,  not  simply  friendliness  towards  the  working  classes  by  the 
propertied  classes,  but  common  justice  and  common  humanity  towards 
them.  "  To  all  who  wish  the  present  tense  hostility  between  rich  and 
poor  in  Germany  to  be  peacefully  diminished,  there  can  be  but  one 
hope :  that  the  governing  classes  will,  at  last,  show  some  small  meas- 
ure of  political  insight,  of  courage,  and  of  generosity.  They  have  shown 
none  in  the  past,  and  they  show  little  at  present.  .  .  .  Cessation  of 
persecution,  complete  and  entire  Democracy,  absolute  freedom  of  coali- 
tion, of  speech,  and  of  the  press  —  these  alone  can  save  Germany,  and 
these,  we  most  fervently  hope,  the  German  rulers  will  grant  before  it  is 
too  late  "  (German  Social  Democracy,  p.  163). 


rv  WESTERN   LIBERALISM  139 

are  incompatible  with  the  materialistic  interpretation 
of  history.  But  it  is  a  conviction  which  has  remained 
almost  without  reasoned  expression  in  the  modern 
science  of  society. 

The  spectacle,  which  presents  itself  at  the  present 
day  behind  the  social  question  in  England  and  the 
United  States  alike,  is  one  which  waits  for  the  scien- 
tific imagination  of  the  historian  of  the  future  to  do 
full  justice  to  it.  It  is  that  of  the  hosts  of  the  great 
army  of  progress  which  has  fought  the  hard-won  battles 
of  Liberalism  in  the  past,  of  that  army  upon  which 
rest  the  sole  hope  and  promise  of  Western  Liberalism 
in  the  future,  of  that  cause  whose  very  life  in  the  past 
has  been  the  inner  knowledge  that  the  meaning  of 
Liberalism  is,  in  the  last  resort,  the  meaning  of  that 
system  of  life  which  has  come  down  in  Western  his- 
tory from  the  beginning  of  our  era  —  standing  grim, 
silent,  scornful  before  the  professors  who  know  only 
the  materialistic  interpretation  of  history.  It  is  an 
army  which  moves  not.  Restive,  sullen,  majestic,  it 
waits  for  the  restatement  of  its  faith  in  other  terms. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    PROBLEM 

THE  main  features  of  the  problem  with  which  we 
are  concerned  in  the  study  of  Western  society  now 
begin  to  present  themselves  in  outline.  There  is  no 
form  of  contemporary  literature  in  which  the  deep 
human  interest  of  that  spectacle  has  as  yet  found 
any  adequate  expression.  There  is  no  department 
of  knowledge  in  which  there  has  yet  arisen  a  writer 
who  has  brought  within  the  full  grasp  of  the  intellect 
the  significance  which  it  will  almost  certainly  present 
in  the  eyes  of  future  generations.  If  we  have  been 
right  so  far,  neither  the  meaning  of  modern  Democ- 
racy, nor  of  Western  Liberalism,  nor  of  the  social 
process  in  the  era  in  which  we  are  living,  can  any 
longer  be  conceived  as  capable  of  being  expressed  in 
any  mere  theory  of  political  or  of  economic  interests 
in  the  State.  We  are  living  in  the  midst  of  a  type 
of  social  order  which  can  only  have  come  to  hold  its 
place  in  the  past,  and  which  can  only  continue  to  hold 
its  place  in  the  future,  in  respect  of  one  ruling  quality 
alone,  namely,  its  own  fitness  in  the  never-relaxed 
strain  and  stress  of  an  ascending  process  of  evolution. 
And  the  ruling  principle  of  that  process  of  increasing 
efficiency  is,  as  we  have  seen  it,  that  every  interest 
of  the  present  in  society  around  us  must  in  the  end 
stand  in  subservient  and  subordinate  relationship  to 
interests  which  cannot,  in  the  nature  of  things,  be 

140 


CHAP,  v  THE  PROBLEM  141 

included  within  any  boundaries  of  merely  political 
consciousness. 

If,  therefore,  the  process  of  social  order  in  the 
midst  of  which  we  are  living  in  Western  history  be 
destined  to  maintain  its  place  in  the  future,  that 
principle  of  the  evolutionary  process  brought  into 
prominence  in  a  previous  chapter  must  be  held  to 
apply  to  it ;  and  we  may  say  that,  in  the  scientific 
formula  of  its  life,  the  interests  of  the  existing 
individuals  possess  neither  place  nor  meaning,  ex- 
cept in  so  far  as  they  are  included  in,  and  are  sub- 
ordinate to,  the  interests  of  a  developing  system  of 
order  the  overwhelming  proportion  of  whose  mem- 
bers are  still  in  the  future.  We  may  have  any 
opinions  whatever  about  our  own  interests  or  those 
of  society.  But,  as  J.  Novicow  points  out,  except 
the  ideal  we  have  in  view  conforms  to  the  natural 
laws  which  are  governing  the  evolutionary  process 
as  a  whole,  all  our  desires  and  attempts  to  perma- 
nently realise  it  are  no  more  than  —  to  use  this 
writer's  phrase  —  "de  purs  gaspillages,"  vain  efforts 
flung  waste  and  squandered  beneath  the  wheels  of 
destiny.1 

1  One  of  the  commonest  errors  to  be  met  with  in  discussions  as  to 
the  ultimate  principles  of  society  is  that  man  has  become  gifted  with 
some  power  peculiar  to  himself  of  suspending  the  cosmic  process,  and 
of  substituting  for  it  another  of  his  own  imagining.  "  La  faculte  de 
preVoir,"  says  M.  Novicow,  "  est  la  source  de  tous  les  progres  de  1'hu- 
manite.  Imaginer  un  etat  a  venir  est  le  seul  moyen  d'en  desirer  la 
realisation.  Mais  cct  ideal  peut  ne  pas  ctrc  confonne  aux  lois  natu- 
relles.  II  peut  constituter  une  veritable  utopie.  Alors  tous  les  efforts 
pour  le  mettre  en  pratique  sont  de  purs  gaspillages  qui  ralcntissent  le 
taux  d'accroissement  du  bien  etre.  Determiner  la  trajcctoire  d'une  force 
nature-lie  et  s'abandonner  a  son  courant,  c'cst  tout  le  progres.  Prevoir 
1'avenir,  signifie  sc  soumettrc  aux  lois  de  la  nature.  Or  la  science  sculc 


142  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

Stripped  of  all  metaphysical  swaddling-clothes  and 
reduced  to  its  plainest  terms,  the  conception  with 
which  we  are  confronted  in  modern  evolutionary 
science  as  applied  to  the  process  of  social  progress 
is  this.  The  history  of  the  world  has  become,  in  the 
last  analysis,  the  history  of  the  development  of  the 
conceptions  by  which  the  individual  is  being  sub- 
ordinated to  the  meaning  of  a  world-process  infinite 
in  its  reach  —  the  history  of  a  development  in  which 
we  are  concerned  with  a  creature  moving  by  inherent 
necessity  towards  a  consciousness  no  longer  merely 
local,  or  national,  or  political,  but  cosmic,  and  from 
whom  the  subordination  in  progress  must,  in  the 
last  resort,  be  demanded  in  terms  of  his  own  mind. 
It  is,  therefore,  in  the  meaning  of  the  great  social 
systems  founded  on  the  conceptions  which  are  effect- 
ing this  process,  and  not  in  any  petty  theory  of  the 
State  conceived  as  an  organisation  of  the  political 
or  economic  interests  of  the  existing  members  of 
society,  that  science  will  have  to  find  in  the  future 
the  controlling  principles  of  the  process  of  social 
development  which  the  race  is  undergoing.  Our 
first  duty  is,  accordingly,  to  endeavour  to  understand 
as  an  organic  whole  the  process  of  life  represented 
in  our  civilisation. 

It   has  been  pointed  out   by  Professor  Marshall1 

pourra  determiner  un  jour  la  trajectoire  de  1'evolution  socialej"  (Z« 
Luttes  entre  Societes  Humaines,  par  J.  Novicow,  p.  175). 

Compare  with  Professor  Marshall's  statement  that  our  first  duty  in 
the  study  of  social  forces  is  "  never  to  allow  our  estimates  as  to  what 
forces  will  prove  the  strongest  in  any  social  contingency  to  be  biassed 
by  our  opinion  as  to  what  forces  ought  to  prove  the  strongest  "  {Quar- 
terly Journal  of  Economics,  vol.  xi.). 

1  "The  Old  Generation  of  Economists  and  the  New,"  by  Alfred 
Marshall,  op.  cit. 


v  THE  PROBLEM  143 

that  one  of  the  principal  results  of  recent  work  in  the 
study  of  society,  even  in  its  economic  relations,  is  to 
bring  home  to  the  mind  the  conclusion  that  the 
infinite  variety  and  complexity  of  natural  forms  with 
which  we  are  concerned  therein  is  compatible  with  a 
remarkable  latent  simplicity  of  governing  principle. 
If  we  apply  this  direction  in  a  wider  sense  it  will  lead 
us,  in  endeavouring  to  consider  the  social  process  in 
our  civilisation  as  an  organic  unity,  to  take  up  at  the 
outset  a  position  sufficiently  detached  to  allow  at  first 
only  the  bolder  outlines  of  the  evolutionary  process 
to  fall  full  and  clear  upon  the  mind.  What,  therefore, 
as  viewed  from  such  a  position,  is  the  nature  of  the 
governing  principle  which  is  distinctive  and  charac- 
teristic of  the  process  of  social  development  in  our 
Western  era  ?  And  whither  is  the  principle  of  social 
efficiency  which  that  process  represents  tending  to 
carry  us  in  the  future  ? 

If  we  turn  to  the  process  of  social  order  presented 
in  the  civilisation  of  our  Western  era,  one  of  the  first 
facts  concerning  it  with  which  we  are  confronted,  is 
the  almost  overwhelming  strength  of  the  conviction 
in  the  general  mind,  that  our  civilisation  not  only 
represents  a  type  of  social  life  which  is  quite  different 
in  principle  from  that  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  worlds 
which  preceded  it,  but  that  it  represents  a  type  which 
is  entirely  exceptional  in  history.  Although  the  fact 
of  the  unbroken  continuity  of  Western  civilisation 
from  the  Greek  and  Roman  times  down  into  our  own 
is  one  of  the  commonplaces  of  knowledge,  yet  an 
immovable  general  instinct,  going  deeper  than  the 
outward  facts  of  history,  conceives  the  system  of 
civilisation  beginning  with  our  era  as  separated  from 


144  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

that  which  preceded  it  by  one  of  the  most  clearly 
marked  lines  of  demarcation  in  the  history  of  life. 
On  one  side  of  the  line  this  general  instinct  sees  the 
cosmic  process  operating  under  one  set  of  conditions. 
On  the  other  side  it  conceives  it  as  having  entered 
on  a  new  phase,  subject  to  other  principles,  and  pro- 
ceeding towards  problems  quite  different  from  any 
that  have  ever  before  been  encountered. 

Now,  in  regarding  the  development  upwards  to- 
wards higher  social  efficiency  of  a  rational  creature 
in  which,  as  it  were,  the  cosmos  itself  moves  towards 
consciousness,  it  will  become  more  and  more  evident 
on  reflection  that  the  process  at  a  particular  stage 
must  possess  features  of  extraordinary  interest. 
The  development  in  progress  in  human  society 
is,  it  may  be  observed,  over  and  above  everything 
else  a  process  of  progress  towards  higher  social 
efficiency.  The  individual,  it  must  always  be  re- 
membered, has  in  that  process  once  and  for  ever 
ceased  to  be  the  factor  of  the  first  importance.  For 
as  society  is  of  necessity  greater  and  more  effective 
than  the  individual,  it  has  been,  from  the  beginning, 
the  efficiency  of  the  system  of  social  order  to  which 
the  individual  belongs  that  has  become  the  de- 
termining element  of  success  in  the  process  which 
is  progress.  And,  as,  under  the  operation  of  the 
law  of  Natural  Selection,  it  must  have  happened 
from  the  outset  that  it  was  the  types  of  social  order 
in  which  the  subordination  of  the  interests  of  the 
individual  to  those  of  the  social  system  around  him 
was  most  complete  and  most  efficient  which  proved 
to  be  the  winning  types ;  so  it  must  be  the  increas- 
ing subordination  of  the  interests  of  the  individual 


v  THE  PROBLEM  145 

to  the  larger  interests  of  society  which  must  con- 
stitute the  dominant  and  controlling  feature  under- 
lying all  the  details  of  the  upward  process  of  social 
evolution. 

If  we  turn  now  and  regard  closely  the  nature  of 
the  laws  governing  this  process  of  subordination,  as 
a  whole,  an  important  fact  respecting  it  comes  into 
view.  It  must,  of  inherent  necessity,  we  perceive, 
fall  into  two  great  eras  or  epochs.  In  each  of  these 
epochs,  moreover,  there  must  be  a  characteristic 
ruling  principle  in  the  ascendant  to  which  all  the 
details  of  the  development  in  progress  will,  in  the 
last  resort,  stand  in  subordinate  relationship.  If  we 
endeavour  to  state  the  ruling  principle  of  the  first 
epoch  it  may  be  put  briefly  into  terms  as  follows  :  — 

In  the  first  epoch  of  social  development  the  char- 
acteristic and  ruling  feature  is  the  supremacy  of  the 
causes  which  are  contributing  to  social  efficiency  by  sub- 
ordinating the  individual  merely  to  the  existing  political 
organisation. 

The  conditions  which  must  prevail  throughout 
the  whole  of  this  first  epoch  of  social  evolution  may 
readily  be  imagined.  From  the  low  level  at  which 
the  struggle  for  existence  was  necessarily  waged 
amongst  the  earliest  groups  of  men,  it  was  inevi- 
table that  under  the  influence  of  Natural  Selection 
the  kind  of  social  efficiency  to  which  the  highest 
importance  would  attach  in  this  first  stage  would  be 
that  in  which  the  military  subordination  of  the  in- 
dividual to  the  group  of  which  he  was  a  member 
was  most  complete  and  efficient.  For,  we  come  to 
see  at  once  that  whatever  efficiency  in  any  other 
sense  society  at  this  stage  might  have  possessed,  it 


146  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

is  absolutely  certain  that  if  it  was  not  also  efficient 
in  a  military  sense  it  would  in  time  have  dis- 
appeared in  the  stress  of  existence.  Social  effi- 
ciency in  the  first  stage  was,  in  short,  by  force 
of  circumstances  practically  equivalent  to  military 
efficiency. 

In  the  first  epoch  of  social  development  we  have, 
therefore,  a  fundamental  fact  clearly  in  sight. 
"  Society,"  as  yet,  can  consist,  as  it  were,  of  little 
more  than  a  single  stratum,  namely,  the  existing 
members  whose  interests  are  supreme.  We  are 
regarding  society  in  the  great  era  of  human  time 
before  the  social  consciousness  is  as  yet  projected 
beyond  the  present,  the  period  of  development  dur- 
ing which  the  social  consciousness  remains  rimmed 
within  the  horizon  of  the  existing  political  organisa- 
tion. It  is,  therefore,  the  era  in  which,  in  all  the  con- 
ditions of  thought,  "  Society  "  and  the  "  State  "  are 
as  yet  regarded  as  one  and  the  same  —  the  era  in 
which  the  existing  political  organisation  still  every- 
where embraces  the  whole  life,  duties,  rights,  and 
religion  of  the  individual  in  relation  to  all  his  kind. 
It  is,  in  short,  the  long-drawn-out  period  of  human 
development  in  which  the  present  is  in  the  ascendant, 
and  in  which  the  fact  of  the  ascendency  of  the 
present  has  stamp'ed  its  dominating  meaning  on  every 
detail  and  principle  of  the  evolutionary  process  in 
society. 

Now,  as  we  concentrate  attention  at  this  point  on 
the  process  which  is  in  progress  in  the  evolution  of 
society,  the  fact  which  gradually  reveals  itself  to 
view  is  that  in  the  development  of  society,  just  as  in 
the  evolution  of  life  in  general,  a  stage  must  at  length 


v  THE  PROBLEM  147 

supervene  at  which  a  new  controlling  principle  will 
emerge  into  sight.  For,  as  in  the  evolution  of  life 
in  general,  so  in  the  evolution  of  society,  it  is  always 
the  future  which  is  of  most  importance.  It  is,  there- 
fore, the  social  systems  in  which,  other  things  being 
equal,  conditions  prevail  which  are  favourable  to  the 
interests  of  the  majority  which  is  always  in  the  future, 
rather  than  to  the  interests  of  that  comparatively 
small  minority  of  individuals  which  is  in  the  present, 
which  must  in  the  end  constitute  the  winning  types. 
There  must,  that  is  to  say,  inevitably  arise  in  the 
evolution  of  society  a  second  stage  in  which  the 
future  will  begin  to  control  the  present,  a  stage  at 
which,  under  the  operation  of  the  law  of  Natural 
Selection,  the  more  efficient  social  type,  in  which  this 
end  is  being  achieved,  will  gradually  become  ascend- 
ant, and  in  the  end  tend  to  eliminate  all  others. 
The  whole  process  of  our  social  evolution  must,  in 
short,  become  in  time  weighted  in  every  detail  by  the 
interests  of  this  larger  future. 

As,  therefore,  in  \.\\a.t  first  epoch  of  social  develop- 
ment in  which  social  efficiency  was  synonymous  with 
military  efficiency,  the  characteristic  and  ruling  prin- 
ciple of  the  epoch  was  seen  to  be  the  supremacy  of 
the  causes  which  contributed  to  social  efficiency  by 
subordinating  the  individual  simply  to  the  existing 
social  organisation  ;  so  now  in  the  second  epoch  the 
distinctive  ruling  principle  may  be  stated  with  equal 
clearness.  It  may  be  put  into  brief  terms  as 
follows  :  — 

In  the  second  epoch  of  the  evolution  of  human 
society  we  begin  to  be  concerned  with  the  rise  to  ascen- 
dency of  the  ruling  causes  which  contribute  to  a  higher 


148  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

type  of  social  efficiency  by  subordinating  society  itself 
with  all  its  interests  in  the  present  to  its  own  future. 

When  we  pause  for  a  moment  and  regard  closely 
the  scientific  principle  of  extraordinary  interest 
which  here  emerges  into  view,  we  begin  to  perceive 
the  significance  and  magnitude  of  the  class  of  phe- 
nomena which  must  accompany  its  slow  rise  into 
prominence  as  the  controlling  cause  in  the  second 
epoch  of  social  evolution.  Along  the  frontiers  where 
the  first  stage  merges  into  the  second,  and  where 
society  itself  begins  to  pass  under  the  control  of  its 
own  future,  the  imagination  catches  sight  for  the  first 
time  of  the  stupendous  reach  of  the  world-drama, 
towards  the  real  study  of  which  science  has  scarcely 
more  than  begun  to  advance. 

When  the  evolutionist  stands  in  history  in  the 
midst  of  the  period  preceding  the  rise  of  the  civilisa- 
tion of  our  era,  there  slowly  awakens  in  his  mind  the 
consciousness  that  the  interest  with  which  the  dim 
instinct  of  many  generations  of  men  in  our  Western 
world  has  tended  to  surround  this  period  in  the  past, 
is  likely  to  be  equalled  if  not  surpassed  in  the  litera- 
ture of  science  in  the  future.  For  he  begins  to  real- 
ise that  it  is  in  this  period  that  he  is  in  reality  looking 
along  the  border  zone  where  the  principles  of  the  two 
processes  which  dominate  the  whole  span  of  human 
evolution  run  into  and  overlap  each  other. 

On  the  one  side,  in  the  great  civilisations  of  the 
ancient  world,  we  have  the  highest  phase  of  an  era  of 
human  development  of  enormously  prolonged  dura- 
tion, the  immense,  world-evolving  stress  of  which  the 
imagination  can  only  feebly  picture.  It  is  the  cul- 
minating period  of  that  epoch  of  time  in  which  the 


v  THE  PROBLEM  149 

present  was  always  in  the  ascendant,  and  in  which 
the  long,  slow  struggle  of  the  race  upwards  was  domi- 
nated in  all  its  aspects  by  the  one  controlling  princi- 
ple of  military  efficiency.  On  the  other  side  we  have 
dimly  portrayed  before  us  the  outlines  of  the  first 
great  organic  system  of  society  in  which  there  is  des- 
tined to  rise  into  ascendency  at  last  the  causes  which 
are  to  project  the  controlling  principles  of  the  evolu- 
tionary process  beyond  the  present.  There  is,  in 
reality,  no  clearly  defined  boundary  line.  Far  away 
into  the  future  there  still  runs  the  influence  of  the 
dominating  principle  of  the  ascendency  of  the  present 
which  has  hitherto  controlled  the  course  of  human 
development.  But  it  is  along  a  downward  curve. 
The  culminating  period  in  the  first  stage  of  the 
human  process  has  been  passed. 

Now  when  the  endeavour  is  made  to  concentrate 
the  mind  at  the  point  in  the  evolutionary  process 
at  which  we  see  society  thus  beginning  to  pass 
definitely  under  the  control  of  the  future,  there  comes 
slowly  into  view  a  fact  the  importance  of  which  soon 
forces  itself  upon  the  attention.  It  may  be  observed 
on  reflection  that,  while  the  whole  trend  of  develop- 
ment in  the  second  epoch  of  social  evolution  must  be 
towards  the  subordination  of  the  present  to  the  future, 
the  battle-ground  upon  which  Natural  Selection  can 
alone  distinguish  between  such  types  of  social  effi- 
ciency as  may  arise  must,  nevertheless,  remain  always 
in  the  present  time.  There  comes  into  view,  there- 
fore, at  this  point  a  remarkable  principle  in  our  social 
evolution.  It  is  that  no  progress  can  be  made  towards 
that  second  and  higher  stage  in  which  the  future  will 
begin  to  control  the  present  until  Natural  Selection 


150  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

has  first  of  all  developed  to  the  highest  possible  extent, 
for  the  time  being,  that  type  of  society  which,  of  all 
others,  possesses  most  power  of  holding  its  own  in  the 
present  time.  For  no  efficiency  in  respect  of  the 
future  would  avail  any  type  of  society  which  did  not 
also  possess  the  power  of  being  efficient  in  such  con- 
ditions as  existed  in  the  present.  If  it  were  not  able 
to  hold  its  own  in  competition  with  other  societies 
organised  to  obtain  the  highest  potency  in  the  present 
time  it  must  simply  disappear  from  view  in  the  stress 
of  evolution. 

The  most  potent  type  of  organised  society  in 
such  conditions  would  be,  beyond  doubt,  that  in 
which  every  element  and  interest  had  been  sub- 
ordinated to  the  end  of  military  efficiency.  What 
we  come,  therefore,  to  perceive  is  that  the  type  of. 
society  organised  towards  military  efficiency  must 
at  this  point  not  only  become  the  rival  of  all  other 
types,  but  that  towards  the  end  of  that  first  stage  it 
will  be  the  one  supreme  and  surviving  type  before 
which  all  others  have  disappeared.  Nay,  more,  we 
see  that  the  rise  to  ascendency  of  the  causes  which 
are  to  subordinate  the  present  to  the  future  in  the 
second  stage  cannot  begin  until  this  culmination  has 
actually  taken  place.  We  seem,  therefore,  to  have, 
in  addition  to  the  principle  of  the  two  stages  already 
enunciated,  this  additional  fact  in  view  :  — 

//  is  only  from  the  type  of  society  in  which  there 
is  still  potential  the  highest  military  efficiency  that  there 
can  be  developed  that  principle  of  social  efficiency 
which,  in  the  second  epoch  of  social  evolution,  mustl 
ultimately  subordinate  organised  society  itself  to  its 
own  future. 


V  THE   PROBLEM  151 

As  we  reflect  on  the  nature  of  the  situation  which 
is  here  presented,  its  features  begin  to  grow  upon 
the  mind.  Slowly  we  distinguish  that  we  have 
before  us  conditions  leading  up  to  a  supreme  crisis 
from  which  there  must  proceed  some  of  the  most 
remarkable  phenomena  that  the  evolution  of  society 
is  destined  to  present.  From  far  back  beyond  the 
earliest  mists  of  human  history  we  see  the  workings 
of  that  stage  of  social  development  in  which  the 
subordination  of  the  individual  to  organised  society  is 
being  effected  —  involved  in  the  tendencies  of  a  vast 
military  process  which  must  culminate  in  a  type  of 
social  organisation  of  which  the  very  life-principle 
must  be  that  of  vigorous,  conscious  self-assertion ; 
and  in  which  every  institution  must  bear  upon  it,  in 
the  last  resort,  the  mark  of  its  relationship  to  the 
condition  of  military  ascendency.  And  yet  it  is 
from  this  type  of  society  that  the  new  social  order 
must  arise.  It  is  from  the  peoples  who  stand  forth 
in  the  evolutionary  process  as  the  supreme  survivors 
of  these  untold  ages  of  military  selection,  and  from 
these  alone,  that  there  must  now  be  developed  that 
higher  type  of  social  efficiency  of  which  the  essential 
life-principle  is  that  every  interest  of  the  existing 
social  order  must  be  subordinated  to  interests  which 
are  not  only  not  included  within  the  present  time, 
or  within  the  existing  social  organisation,  but  which 
must  remain  projected  beyond  the  content  of  even 
political  consciousness. 

We  have  evidently  here  the  outlines  of  a  cardinal 
position  in  the  development  of  human  society,  a  situa- 
tion in  which  the  master-principles  that  are  shaping 
the  course  of  human  evolution  must  meet  and  come 


152  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

into  conflict.  As  the  mind  is  carried  back  to  the  first 
epoch  of  the  social  process,  where  we  observe  the 
individual  simply  passing  under  the  control  of  the 
existing  social  organisation,  there  rises  before  it  a 
picture  of  the  opposition,  stubborn,  sullen,  indefinitely 
prolonged,  which  has  accompanied  this  first  stage 
of  subordination,  and  of  the  immense  range  of 
phenomena  through  which  the  process  has  been 
gradually  effected.  Out  of  the  resulting  resistance 
there  have  arisen  all  the  great  systems  of  custom, 
of  social  morality,  and  of  law,  in  operation  through- 
out the  world  around  us ;  the  function  of  which  has 
been  to  subordinate  the  individual  merely  to  the 
existing  interests  of  society. 

Yet  the  resistance  which  the  individual  offered 
to  a  process  subordinating  him  to  the  existing  political 
organisation  —  a  resistance  from  which  proceeds  even 
now  all  the  more  profound  and  tragic  impulses 
throughout  the  whole  realm  of  art  and  literature  — 
can  be,  it  is  perceived,  nothing  more  than  the  feeble 
anticipation  of  that  resistance  which  organised  society 
will  itself  offer  in  the  second  stage  to  a  process 
which  must  in  the  end  subordinate  it  to  the  interests 
of  a  future  beyond  the  limits  of  its  political  con- 
sciousness. 

Nay  more,  as  the  efficiency  of  the  individual,  qua 
individual,  has  been  —  as  every  master-worker  in  the 
art  and  the  literature  of  the  emotions  always  intui- 
tively perceives — itself  the  measure  of  the  intensity 
of  the  resistance  offered  to  the  process  subordinating 
him  to  organised  society,1  so  now  the  efficiency  of 

1  The  profound  transition  which  all  the  standards  in  art,  in  litera- 
ture, and  the  drama  are  slowly  undergoing  in  the  modern  world  is  one 


v  THE  PROBLEM  1 53 

organised  society  must  be  itself  the  measure  of  the 
resistance  which  society  will  offer  to  its  own  subordi- 
nation to  interests  beyond  the  limits  of  its  political 
consciousness.  What  we  see  is  that  the  entire  range 
of  the  processes  of  the  human  mind  in  its  highest 
manifestations  must  be  drawn  into  the  vortex  of  this 
supreme  conflict.  In  it  we  stand  at  the  very  pivot  of 
the  evolutionary  process  in  human  history.  The 
whole  content  of  systems  of  thought,  of  philosophy, 
of  morality,  of  ethics,  and  of  religion,  must  in  time 
be  caught  into  it.  It  is  in  the  resulting  demiurgic 
stress  that  rival  systems  of  society  will  be  uncon- 
sciously pitted  against  each  other ;  that  nations,  and 
peoples,  and  great  types  of  civilisation  will  meet,  and 
clash,  and  have  their  principles  tested.  And  it  is  in 

of  the  most  interesting  subjects  of  study  to  the  evolutionist  who  has 
grasped  the  relationship  to  each  other  of  the  governing  principles  of 
the  two  eras  of  human  evolution  here  described.  The  character  of 
the  transition  will  be  more  fully  dealt  with  in  relation  to  the  standards 
in  Greek  art  discussed  in  the  next  chapter.  The  tendency  of  the 
emerging  emotions  which  are  related  to  the  second  epoch  of  social 
evolution  is  not  yet  clearly  perceived,  although  it  is  one  of  the  most 
disturbing  influences  in  modern  art.  The  still  dominating  influence 
of  the  impulses  and  emotions  which  are  related  to  the  first  era  of  our 
social  evolution  is,  however,  well  understood  in  the  art  of  the  drama. 
In  a  recent  address  in  England  to  an  audience  interested  in  the 
drama,  Mr.  W.  L.  Courtney  created  discussion  by  setting  his  hearers  a 
psychological  problem.  In  the  first  place,  he  asked,  could  a  very 
good  man  be  a  hero.  With  all  fear  of  certain  dramatic  critics  before 
his  eyes,  he  answered,  "  No  "  ;  the  exceptionally  good  man  could  not 
be  a  hero  of  drama.  The  reasons  were  obvious.  In  the  first  place, 
the  drama  dealt  with  action,  and  the  saint  was  passive.  In  the  second 
place,  the  drama  dealt  with  emotions,  and,  ex  hypothesi,  the  saint  was 
a  man  who  had  subdued  emotion.  In  the  third  place,  what  an  audi- 
ence looked  for  in  a  hero  was  an  exhibition  of  mastery,  of  force,  of 
something  which  would  engage  their  interest  and  make  the  hero  sig- 
nificant. —  Address  to  tlie  O.  P.  Club,  London. 


154  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP,  v 

respect  of  the  controlling  principle  of  the  conflict  — 
the  degree  of  efficiency  of  the  subordination  of  the 
present  to  the  future  —  that  Natural  Selection  will 
continue  to  discriminate  between  the  living  and  the 
dead  as  the  progress  of  the  world  continues. 

This  is  the  problem  upon  which  the  curtain  rises 
in  Western  history  in  the  era  of  our  civilisation  in 
which  we  are  living.  In  the  whole  span  of  the 
history  of  the  included  period  hardly  more  than 
the  first  outlines  of  the  problem  have  yet  begun  to 
be  portrayed.  It  is  the  distant-voiced  consciousness 
of  the  position  therein  being  defined  which  runs  like 
a  cosmic  undertone  throughout  all  the  philosophy  of 
the  race.  No  essential  of  the  dramatic,  no  element 
of  the  sublime,  is  wanting.  Every  quality  of  the 
deepest  human  pathos,  every  constituent  of  the 
highest  scientific  interest,  is  present. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT 

WE  can  never  hope  to  fully  understand  the  princi- 
ples of  the  world-drama  which  has  begun  to  unfold 
itself  in  the  civilisation  of  our  era,  or  the  nature  of 
the  interval  which  separates  that  civilisation  from  all 
the  past  history  of  the  race,  until  the  mind  has  ob- 
tained a  clear  intellectual  grasp  of  the  character  of 
the  process  which  culminated  in  the  civilisations 
which  preceded  its  rise. 

As  in  the  light  of  modern  research  the  veil  is 
being  slowly  lifted  from  the  various  phases  —  social, 
political,  ethical,  and  religious — of  the  civilisations 
of  the  Greek  and  Roman  peoples,  the  whole  presents 
to  the  evolutionist  a  study,  the  interest  of  which  not 
only  equals,  but  exceeds  that  for  which  a  long  series 
of  generations  of  students  in  the  past  instinctively 
turned  to  it.  In  it  we  have  outlined  the  culminating 
phases  of  that  immense  epoch  of  human  development 
in  which  the  present  was  always  in  the  ascendant ; 
the  isolated  pinnacles  of  achievement  that  rise  above 
the  silent  and  unfathomable  ocean  of  prehistoric  time 
which  covers  the  long,  slow  struggle  of  the  race 
upwards  under  the  controlling  principle  of  military 
efficiency.  In  it  we  have  presented  the  study  of  a 
world  in  which  the  evolutionary  process,  already  on 
the  threshold  of  a  new  era,  is  yet  about  to  exhibit, 
within  the  narrow  limits  which  the  mechanism  of  the 

'55 


156  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

past  has  imposed  upon  it,  the  very  highest  poten- 
tiality of  the  governing  principle  which  has  hitherto 
controlled  it ;  and  to  display,  in  a  comparatively  brief 
period,  and  in  almost  every  department  of  activity, 
the  energy,  the  efficiency,  and  the  domination  of 
every  form  of  human  force  capable  of  reaching  its 
highest  expression  in  the  ascendant  present. 

In  endeavouring  to  bring  clearly  into  view  the  fact 
that  in  Greek  and  Roman  history  we  have  portrayed 
a  type  of  civilisation  in  which  the  ruling  causes  in 
every  department  of  social  organisation  are  but  pro- 
jections through  the  various  mediums  of  human 
activity  of  the  single  governing  principle  of  the  as- 
cendency of  the  present,  which  found  its  highest 
outward  expression  in  a  military  order  of  society ;  it 
will  be  well  to  present  to  the  mind  for  a  short  space  a 
view  of  the  relation  of  these  civilisations  themselves 
to  the  larger  world-movement  of  which  they  form 
part.  Who,  it  may  be  asked,  are  these  Western 
peoples  in  whose  life  history  the  civilisation  of 
Greece  and  Rome  are  themselves,  in  one  sense,  no 
more  than  passing  incidents  ?  Who  are  those  peo- 
ples who  are  thus  about  to  carry  the  military  phase 
of  evolution  to  its  highest  expression,  and  amongst 
whom,  if  we  have  been  right  in  the  previous  chapter, 
there  can  alone  be  produced  the  vast  historical 
milieu  necessary  for  the  rise  into  ascendency  of  the 
governing  principle  of  that  second  epoch  of  human 
development  in  which  the  controlling  centre  of  the 
evolutionary  process  is  destined  to  be  projected  out 
of  the  present  into  the  future  ? 

If  we  endeavour  to  answer  this  question  there 
is  immediately  called  up  before  the  mind,  even  in 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  157 

the  broken  and  disjointed  sequences  in  which  science 
is  as  yet  able  to  present  it,  an  imposing  spectacle. 
For  thousands  of  years,  first  of  all  through  the  buried 
records  of  the  past,  then  in  the  dim  twilight  of  tradi- 
tion, and  last  of  all  in  the  full  light  of  history,  we  see 
moving  across  the  territories  of  Europe,  in  successive 
waves  from  the  north  and  east,  the  ancestors  of  the 
peoples  who  have  made,  and  who  continue  still  to 
make  to  an  increasing  degree,  the  most  notable  part 
of  the  recorded  history  of  the  human  race.  Although 
many  cardinal  points  concerning  the  invasions,  the 
migrations,  and  the  conflicts  of  the  conquering 
peoples,  from  whom  the  prevailing  races  in  later 
European  history,  as  well  as  the  races  which  founded 
the  Greek  and  Roman  civilisations,  are  descended, 
are  as  yet  under  dispute ;  of  the  movements  them- 
selves, of  their  general  character,  and  of  the  world- 
shaping  effects  of  conflict  and  conquest  to  which 
they  gave  rise,  there  is  no  room  for  doubt.  From 
the  period  at  which,  long  before  the  dawn  of  history, 
the  migrations  and  conquests  of  the  tribes  from 
which  the  existing  European  races  are  descended 
began,  down  to  the  period  in  history  when,  in  the 
presence  of  the  decaying  Roman  empire,  the  last 
waves  of  the  conquering  invaders  were  brought  to 
rest  in  the  territories  they  were  to  occupy  in  modern 
history,  we  have  presented  a  movement  in  the  world's 
history  with  an  impetus  and  a  meaning  behind  it  of 
which  there  can  be  no  mistaking  the  character. 

It  is  impossible  for  science  as  yet  to  follow  in  any 
close  detail  the  course  of  the  process  of  conquest,  of 
extermination,  and  of  fusion  which  this  long-drawn- 
out  conflict  of  peoples  represents.  Some  faint  idea 


158  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

of  its  duration,  its  intensity,  and  its  magnitude  may 
be  obtained  by  the  distribution,  on  the  Eurasian 
continent  of  to-day,  of  the  languages  of  a  common  or 
of  nearly  related  stock  which  the  ascendant  peoples 
spread  over  the  immense  territories  to  which  their 
activities  and  invasions  extended. 

Far  away  in  the  East,  in  the  Indie  branch,  embrac- 
ing Sanscrit  with  all  its  modern  derivatives,  we  have 
the  mark  of  the  impact  of  the  tide  of  invasion  and 
conquest  upon  India.  Further  west  still  in  Asia,  in 
the  Iranic,  Galchic,  and  Armenic  branches  —  with 
their  subordinate  Zend  and  Afghan,  Persian,  Pamir, 
Hindu-Kush,  Armenian,  and  other  groups  of  lan- 
guages —  we  have  represented  other  lines  of  advance. 
Coming  into  Europe,  the  great  Hellenic  group  of 
languages,  with  its  ancient  and  modern  derivatives, 
represents  another  area  of  conquest.  Further  west 
we  have  marked  the  advance  of  the  Italic  branch  with 
its  ancient  Oscan,  Sabine,  Umbrian,  and  kindred  lan- 
guages, of  which  we  catch  sight  in  history  before  they 
have  yet  gone  down  before  the  later  world-subduing 
Latin.  Further  north  in  Europe  we  have  the  region  of 
the  Lithuanic  branch,  and  yet  again  the  great  area  of 
conquest  represented  by  the  once  widely-distributed 
Celtic  tongues.  And,  last  of  all,  we  have  the  suc- 
cessive waves  of  advance  and  conquest  which  are 
marked  by  the  present  distribution  of  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  great  Slavic  and  Teutonic  divisions  of 
speech.  Even  when  all  allowance  is  made  for  the  ex- 
tension of  a  language  by  other  means  than  war,  what 
a  course  of  unimagined  and  unimaginable  conquest 
does  the  mere  recapitulation  of  such  a  list  represent. 
For  an  immense  period  of  time  the  successive  waves 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  159 

of  invaders  must  have  continued  their  impact  upon 
each  other,  or  upon  the  peoples  whom  they  encoun- 
tered ;  conquering  and  exterminating,  taking  posses- 
sion, settling  and  absorbing,  and  again  moving  to 
repeat  the  process.  Although  the  advancing  waves 
must  again  and  again  have  broken  and  dispersed,  the 
movement  as  a  whole  must  have  continued  with  little 
intermission  for  thousands  of  years  before  the  dawn 
of  history. 

With  the  opening  of  the  historic  period  we  have  it 
at  last  in  view  on  European  territory  in  an  advanced 
stage.  Illyrians  and  Letts,  Greeks  and  Latins,  Celts, 
Slavs,  and  Teutons  —  these  represent  but  the  later 
waves  of  the  invasions.  Viewed  in  their  proper  per- 
spective, the  histories  of  the  classic  civilisations  them- 
selves represent  but  the  last  phases  in  which  this 
movement  of  conquest  in  Europe  is  tending  to  reach 
its  climax.  The  earliest  history  of  Greece  opens  with 
the  tribes  in  conflict  with  related  peoples  pressing  on 
their  borders.  During  the  period  in  which  it  became 
the  destiny  of  the  Greeks  to  leave  their  mark  indelibly 
impressed  upon  the  world,  they  maintained  uninter- 
rupted conflict  with  peoples  representing  other  waves 
of  advance  of  the  same  stock.  And,  later  still,  as 
they  sink  out  of  sight  in  European  history,  their  blood 
is  swamped  at  last  in  the  still  incoming  tide  of  Slavs 
and  kindred  peoples  from  the  north. 

We  view  the  history  of  Rome  in  the  same  perspec- 
tive. With  the  first  rise  of  Roman  history  we  catch 
the  echo  of  the  strife  of  the  tribes  of  Latin  stock,  and 
kindred  peoples,  who  have  wandered  into  the  Italian 
peninsula.  On  the  edge  of  history  we  see  the  future 
mistress  of  the  world  with  Brennus  and  his  tribes  from 


160  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  north  beleaguering  her.  The  history  of  the  Ro- 
man dominion  is  but  a  vast  chapter  in  this  long-drawn- 
out  process,  in  which  the  governing  principle  —  the 
ideal  of  unrestrained  conquest  —  tends  at  last  to 
reach  its  inherent  and  inevitable  climax  in  the  realisa- 
tion of  universal  dominion.  Viewed  in  its  larger  rela- 
tions, the  last  stage  of  all  —  the  invasion  of  the 
Roman  territories  by  the  barbarians  of  the  north  and 
the  overthrow  of  the  outward  dominion  of  Rome  by 
the  tribesmen  —  is  but  part  of  the  same  movement 
slowly  reaching  its  climax  in  history.  For  the  rela- 
tionships and  the  institutions  of  the  later  invaders  but 
carry  us  back  to  the  Greeks  of  the  Homeric  age  ;  and 
the  barbarians  who  overran  the  Roman  empire  were 
dealing,  to  use  Freeman's  words,  "not  with  fore- 
fathers, but  elder  brethren,  men  whose  institutions 
and  whose  speech  were  simply  other  forms  of  their 
own."  l  We  see  them,  at  last,  Markomans  and 
Franks,  Goths  and  Suevi,  Vandals  and  Longobards, 
Slavs,  Angles,  and  Saxons  —  each  in  turn  represent- 
ing last  eddies  in  the  great  tide  of  military  conquest, 
each  in  turn  representing  the  survival  of  untold  ages 
of  movement,  of  advance,  and  of  military  selection  — 
surging  now  into  the  vast  arena  which  the  mistress 
of  the  world  had  cleared  for  them  in  history,  coming 
to  rest  now  at  last  in  the  seats  they  were  finally  to 
occupy,  in  the  visible  presence  and  under  the  actual 
thrall  of  the  forms  and  mechanism  of  that  empire  in 
which  the  ideal  of  universal  conquest  had  once  and 
for  ever  culminated. 

The  ruling  fact  which  stands  out  clearly  before  the 
imagination  in  regarding  this  movement  of  peoples  as 

1  Cf.  Chief  Periods  of  European  History,  by  E.  A.  Freeman,  pp.  7,  8. 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  l6l 

a  whole,  is  that  it  must  have  represented  a  process  of 
military  selection,  probably  the  most  sustained,  pro- 
longed, and  culminating  in  character  that  the  race  has 
ever  undergone.  Every  item  of  information,  which 
recent  science  and  research  have  been  able  to  con- 
tribute to  our  knowledge  of  it,  adds  to  the  reasons  for 
estimating  it  in  this  light.  In  the  history  of  all  the 
movements  of  the  conquering  peoples,  we  appear  to 
be  always  in  the  presence  of  races  of  pure  white  stock ; 
inhabitants,  therefore,  at  the  outset,  of  territories 
where  the  struggle  with  nature  for  existence  had  been 
for  long  ages  continuous  and  severe.  In  all  their 
wanderings,  conflicts,  and  conquests,  it  must  have 
been  the  bravest,  the  strongest,  the  most  daring,  who 
continuously  went  forward.  The  fittest  who  survived 
were  those  who  did  so  in  their  own  stern  right.  The 
process  as  a  whole  must  have  been  one  of  unexampled 
stress  in  all  its  stages  ;  a  process  of  military  selection, 
rigorous,  effective,  and  immensely  prolonged  in  time. 

This  is  the  stupendous  framework  in  which  we  see 
set  that  period  of  the  world's  development  in  which 
the  type  of  society  organised  to  obtain  the  highest 
potentiality  in  the  present  time  is  now  about  to  be- 
come the  rival  of  all  other  types ;  and  in  which  the 
process  of  social  order  organised  towards  military 
efficiency  is  about  to  attain,  before  the  opening  of  the 
second  epoch  of  social  evolution,  the  position  of  the 
one  surviving  type  which  has  become  supreme  over 
all  others. 

When,  therefore,  in  imagination  the  evolutionist 
takes  his  stand  in  history  in  the  midst  of  that  phase 
of  social  order  represented  in  the  empires  of  the 
ancient  world,  he  beholds  the  process  of  life  around 


1 62  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

him  tense  with  a  more  characteristic  virility,  in- 
stinct with  a  larger  and  deeper  meaning,  than  he 
finds  anywhere  disclosed  in  the  more  or  less  local 
studies  of  the  political  histories  of  these  civilisations 
which  have  for  the  most  part  filled  the  literature 
of  the  past.  In  the  civilisations  of  the  ancient  oli- 
garchies, of  the  Greek  states,  and  of  the  Roman 
empire  he  is  regarding,  he  sees,  not  some  isolated 
and  distinct  type  of  society,  the  principles  of  which 
can  be  studied  apart  in  themselves ;  but  one  in  which 
is  represented  the  last  phase  of  an  epoch  of  de- 
velopment which  has  occupied  the  greater  part  of 
the  past  history  of  the  race.  All  the  relationships 
of  the  time  must  have,  he  feels,  the  same  mark 
upon  them.  Every  tendency  in  ethics,  every  prin- 
ciple in  politics,  every  instinct  in  art,  every  ideal  in 
religion,  must  have  some  relationship  to  the  omnipo- 
tent governing  principle  of  the  ascendency  of  the 
present  which  has  hitherto  controlled  the  develop- 
ment of  the  world.  And  the  highest  outward  ex- 
pression, in  which  all  the  tendencies  must  meet  and 
culminate,  will  be,  he  realises,  the  military  State 
bounded  in  its  energies  only  by  the  resistance  of 
others,  acknowledging  no  complete  end  short  of  abso- 
lute dominion,  staying  its  course  before  no  possible 
ideal  short  of  universal  conquest. 

Now  we  can  never  get  to  the  heart  of  the  two 
last  and  greatest  civilisations  of  the  ancient  world 
until  we  understand  the  nature  of  the  peculiar  and 
exclusive  significance  to  be  attached  to  the  central 
fact  upon  which  they  rested,  and  from  which  pro- 
ceeded the  governing  spirit  of  the  ancient  State  in 
all  its  phases.  This  was  the  institution  of  exclusive 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  163 

citizenship.  The  deeper  we  get  in  the  history  of  the 
Greek  and  Roman  peoples  the  more  clearly  do  we 
see  how  the  whole  fabric  of  the  ancient  civilisations, 
military  and  civil,  legal  and  religious,  is  ultimately 
related  to  this  institution.  The  military  ideals  of 
the  State  ;  the  conditions  of  land  tenure  ;  the  relation 
of  the  units  in  a  military  organisation  of  society ;  the 
attitude  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  peoples  throughout 
their  history  to  slaves,  to  conquered  races,  and  to  all 
other  nations ;  the  prevailing  standards  of  conduct ; 
the  ideals  in  public  and  private  life ;  the  standpoint 
in  that  remarkable  product  of  the  ancient  world,  the 
Roman  ius  civile  ;  and  last,  but  not  least,  the  signifi- 
cance of  that  epoch  in  the  history  of  the  world  in 
which  we  watch  the  Roman  ius  civile  being  slowly 
superseded  by  the  ius  gentium,  without  any  influx  of 
new  life  to  a  type  of  social  order  which  was  organi- 
cally united  to  the  forms  under  which  the  spirit  of  the 
old  ius  civile  expressed  itself ;  —  can  all  be  fully  under- 
stood only  when  we  have  grasped  the  inner  signifi- 
cance of  the  institution  of  citizenship  in  the  ancient 
world. 

Throughout  the  ancient  civilisations  from  the 
earliest  times  the  institution  of  citizenship  was,  to 
use  words  of  Mommsen,  "altogether  of  a  moral- 
religious  nature." 1  What,  therefore,  in  the  first 
place,  was  the  origin  and  character  of  this  moral- 
religious  bond  to  which  the  entire  constitution  of 
the  ancient  State  —  moral,  political,  and  military  — 
was  in  the  last  resort  related  ? 

When  we  regard  attentively  the  present  state  of 

1  Mommsen's  History  of  Rome,  translated  by  W.  P.  Dickson,  vol.  i. 
p.  246. 


164  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

knowledge  concerning  the  development  of  religious 
beliefs,  a  very  striking  natural  law  regarding  them 
may  be  seen  to  be  slowly  emerging  into  view.1  It 
is  that  all  the  religious  systems  that  have  influenced 
the  race  fall  into  two  great  and  clearly  defined  cate- 
gories ;  and  further,  that  the  growth  of  the  religious 
faculty  itself  is  proceeding  along  the  line  of  develop- 
ment by  which  a  system  of  religion  rises  from  the 
first  of  these  categories  into  the  second. 

If  we  look  closely,  first  of  all,  at  the  second  cate- 
gory, which  includes  all  the  higher  forms  of  religious 
belief  existing  amongst  the  advanced  peoples,  the 
characteristic  which  is  distinctive  of  it  may  be  per- 
ceived at  once.  This  is  that  the  vital  interests  with 
which  the  religious  beliefs  included  therein  are  con- 
cerned are  not  primarily  interests  of  a  material  char- 
acter, or  even  interests  which  are  to  any  important 
degree  expressed  in  the  present  time.  What  we  have 
represented,  over  and  above  everything  else,  in  the 
systems  of  belief  in  this  higher  category,  is  a  series 
of  ideas  and  conceptions  by  which  the  individual  is 
brought  into  a  state  of  consciousness  of  his  relation 
to  the  universal  and  the  infinite,  and  through  which 
every  material  interest  of  the  present  is  made  to  sink 
into  a  position  of  comparative  insignificance.2 

But  when  we  turn  now  to  the  other  category,  its 
distinctive  feature,  as  soon  as  it  is  pointed  out,  is 

1  Compare  the  position  reached  in  Edward  Caird's  Evolution  of 
Religion  and  his  Critical  Philosophy  of  Immanuel  Kant. 

3  We  are  so  constantly  and  familiarly  brought  into  contact  with 
this  characteristic  in  the  prevailing  forms  of  religious  belief  in  our 
Western  world,  that  we  are  hardly  conscious  of  one  significant  fact 
regarding  it.  It  is  entirely  new  and  recent  in  the  history  of  religious 
development. 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  165 

grasped  with  equal  readiness  by  the  mind.  Through 
all  the  systems  of  religious  belief  included  in  this 
lower  category  there  runs  also  a  feature  which  is 
characteristic.  It  is  that  the  great  object  of  the 
religion  is  held  by  its  adherents  to  be  that  of  obtain- 
ing material  advantage  in  the  present  time  for  those 
observing  its  rites  and  ceremonies.  It  is  around  the 
material  interests  of  the  existing  individuals  in  the 
present  time  that  the  whole  cultus  of  the  religion 
tends  to  centre.  The  characteristic  and  consistent 
feature  of  all  the  systems  included  in  this  category 
is,  in  short,  that  the  controlling  aims  of  the  religious 
consciousness  are  in  the  present  time. 

The  profound  significance  of  the  transition  which 
is  indicated  in  the  development  from  the  lower  to 
the  higher  of  these  two  categories  of  religious  belief, 
is  evidently  closely  related  to  that  of  the  law  of  the 
two  great  eras  of  social  evolution,  referred  to  in  the 
last  chapter ;  in  the  first  of  which  we  see  the  individ- 
ual being  subordinated  simply  to  the  existing  social 
organisation,  and  in  the  second  of  which  we  see 
society  itself  being  subordinated  to  a  meaning  which 
transcends  the  content  of  all  its  existing  interests. 

Now  when  we  look  closely  at  the  religious  systems 
of  the  Greek  and  Roman  worlds  two  facts  are  appar- 
ent. In  the  first  place,  it  is  immediately  perceived 
that  these  systems  belong  to  the  category  in  which 
the  religious  consciousness  is  related  to  ends  which 
express  themselves,  for  the  most  part,  in  the  present 
time.  In  the  second  place,  it  may  be  perceived  on 
examination  that  the  governing  idea  of  the  systems 
—  to  which  all  other  ideas  stand  in  subordinate  rela- 
tionship—  is  that  of  an  exclusive  religious  fellowship, 


1 66  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

in  which  all  the  members  of  the  community  or  of  the 
State  are  joined ;  but  in  which  outsiders  cannot  par- 
ticipate without  sacrilege.  This  is  the  central  idea 
in  all  the  religious  systems  of  the  ancient  world.  It 
is  from  it  that  the  conception  of  exclusive  citizenship 
—  the  fundamental  fact  of  the  Greek  and  Roman 
civilisations  —  proceeds.  It  is  the  ruling  idea  to 
which,  in  the  last  resort,  all  the  life  and  institutions  of 
the  social  systems  of  the  ancient  world  were  related. 
What,  therefore,  is  the  significance  of  this  conception 
of  exclusive  citizenship,  "altogether  moral-religious 
in  its  nature,"  in  that  epoch  of  history  in  which  the 
development  of  society  under  the  controlling  prin- 
ciple of  military  efficiency  is  about  to  culminate  ? 

Almost  the  first  point  which  occupies  attention  in 
such  an  inquiry  is  the  fact  that  the  fundamental 
conceptions  underlying  the  institution  of  citizenship 
in  the  ancient  civilisations  were  not,  as  may  readily 
be  imagined,  in  any  way  peculiar  to  the  early  Greek 
and  Latin  communities.  They  were  conceptions 
associated  with  an  organisation  of  society  which  was 
common  at  the  time  to  a  vast  number  of  similar 
communities  spread  over  wide  territories  in  Europe 
and  Asia.  They  were  conceptions  which  had  doubt- 
less persisted  for  an  immense  period  of  time,  and 
they  appear  to  have  characterised  at  one  stage  the 
history  of  all  the  races  from  which  have  been  de- 
scended the  peoples  that  in  modern  times  have  come 
to  play  a  leading  part  on  the  stage  of  the  world. 
They  have,  beyond  doubt,  some  vital  significance  in 
relation  to  the  principle  of  overmastering  efficiency 
in  the  present  which  governs  the  first  of  the  two 
eras  of  social  evolution  described  in  the  last  chapter. 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  167 

Now,  in  the  light  of  the  modern  tendencies  of 
research,  it  has  come  to  be  seen  that  we  have  un- 
doubtedly in  the  religious  systems  of  Greece  and 
Rome  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  highly  specialised 
form  of  a  religious  phenomenon  which  has  profoundly 
influenced  for  an  immense  period  the  history  and 
development  of  nearly  every  section  of  the  human 
race ;  namely,  the  institution  of  Ancestor  Worship. 
At  the  present  day,  as  the  course  of  modern  research 
brings  slowly  to  light  the  conditions  under  which  the 
first  advances  of  the  race  towards  a  social  state  were 
made,  every  student  of  the  early  institutions  of  man- 
kind finds  himself  brought  into  continual  contact, 
and  at  a  multitude  of  points,  with  the  subject  of 
Ancestor  Worship.  On  all  the  peoples  who  are  play- 
ing a  leading  part  in  the  world  nowadays,  on  a  great 
number  even  of  existing  social  institutions,  and  on 
nearly  every  religion,  Ancestor  Worship  appears  to 
have  left  its  mark  deeply  and  indelibly  impressed.1 

When  the  evolutionist  comes  to  take  up  for  him- 
self the  question  of  the  significance  in  human  develop- 
ment of  the  immense  range  of  phenomena  connected 
with  the  institution  of  Ancestor  Worship,  he  soon 
becomes  conscious  that  it  is  impossible  to  accept  as 
sufficient  those  more  or  less  trivial  explanations  of 
the  origin  of  the  institution  which  prevail  in  the 
literature  of  the  time,  and  of  which  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer  has  hitherto  been  regarded  as  the  principal 

1  Its  influence  may  be  traced,  even  in  the  present  day,  on  the  beliefs 
and  social  customs  of  peoples  so  far  apart  as  the  existing  Chinese,  the 
Semitic  races  of  the  East,  and  the  Celtic  populations  of  the  British 
islands.  Cf.  The  Structure  of  Greek  Tribal  Society,  by  Hugh  E. 
Seebohm,  p.  19. 


1 68  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

exponent.  In  these  explanations  the  phenomenon 
of  Ancestor  Worship  is  said  to  arise  from  an  intro- 
spective and  purely  imaginary  process  of  thought 
assumed  to  take  place  in  the  minds  of  early  men  in 
relation  to  a  supposed  belief  in  ghosts.  Its  origin 
is  considered,  that  is  to  say,  in  relation  to  a  sub- 
jective, fanciful,  and  entirely  trivial  train  of  ideas 
in  the  mind  of  the  individual,  and  not  to  any  seri- 
ous extent  in  relation  to  any  principle  of  our  social 
evolution.1 

We  see  after  a  time,  in  short,  that  the  origin  of 
the  institution  of  Ancestor  Worship  must  have  some 
other  and  altogether  deeper  significance  than  this. 
A  phenomenon  which  is  represented  on  so  vast 

1  Briefly  summarised,  Mr.  Spencer's  theory  is  as  follows  :  Changes 
in  the  sky  and  on  the  earth,  with  shadows,  echoes,  dreams,  insensi- 
bility, and  sleep,  foster  in  the  childish  mind  of  primitive  man  the 
notion  of  duality  —  of  a  spirit  which  can  leave  the  body  at  will,  and 
which,  with  one  kind  of  unconsciousness,  does  not  come  back  at  all  — 
with  death.  The  belief  grows  that  these  ghosts  or  the  doubles  of  dead 
men  are  the  causes  of  all  strange  and  mysterious  things  in  nature,  and 
primitive  man  begins  to  propitiate  them  by  prayer  and  sacrifice. 
When  the  chief  or  some  leader  of  influence  dies  who  has  been  held  in 
awe  during  his  life,  his  spirit  is  held  in  greater  awe,  and  is  assumed  to 
possess  greater  powers  on  death,  and  he  is  worshipped  as  a  superhu- 
man being.  Leaders  and  chiefs  of  conquering  races  tend  especially  to 
become  objects  of  worship  after  death,  and  so,  Mr.  Spencer  considers, 
the  multiplication  of  deities  continues  until  Ancestor  Worship  becomes 
the  root  of  all  existing  religions.  Thus,  to  quote  Mr.  Spencer's  sum- 
mary, setting  out  with  the  wandering  double  which  the  dream  sug- 
gests ;  passing  to  the  double  which  goes  away  at  death  ;  advancing 
from  this  ghost,  supposed  but  to  have  a  transitory  second  life,  to 
ghosts  which  exist  permanently,  and,  therefore,  accumulate,  primitive 
man  is  led  gradually  to  people  surrounding  space  with  supernatural 
beings,  until,  using  the  phrase  in  the  broadest  sense  as  comprehending 
all  worship  of  the  dead,  Mr.  Spencer  finds  Ancestor  Worship  to  be  the 
root  of  every  religion  (Principles  of  Sociology,  §§  68-207). 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  169 

a  scale,  and  which  has  undoubtedly  played  so  im- 
mense a  part  in  the  evolution  of  early  society,  must 
be  related  to  some  constant,  deep-seated,  and  uni- 
versal principle  of  social  development,  different  in 
kind  from  any  of  which  account  is  taken  in  the 
comparatively  slight  explanations  just  mentioned. 

What,  then,  is  this  principle  of  social  develop- 
ment ?  There  can  be  little  doubt  as  to  the  character 
of  the  answer  which  must  be  given  to  this  question. 
What  we  come  to  see  is  that  in  the  stage  of  the 
world's  development,  in  which  every  feature  of  social 
organisation  is  inevitably,  and  from  the  beginning, 
involved  in  the  sweep  of  a  vast,  slowly  developing 
military  process,  the  institution  of  Ancestor  Worship 
must  be  directly  related  to  the  controlling  principle 
of  the  epoch.  It  was,  we  must  come  to  see,  through 
the  type  of  social  order  developed  from  the  institu- 
tion of  Ancestor  Worship,  and  having  for  its  central 
feature  the  conception  of  exclusive  citizenship,  and 
through  this  type  alone,  that  it  was  possible  to  reach 
the  culminating  phase  of  that  first  epoch  of  human 
evolution  in  which  the  social  consciousness  is  related 
to  ends  expressing  themselves  exclusively  through 
the  existing  political  organisation  ;  and  of  which  the 
outward  political  ideal  was  of  necessity  the  military 
State,  ever  grimly  tending  towards  the  only  possible 
goal  of  its  epoch  —  universal  military  conquest. 

It  may  be  observed,  accordingly,  that  at  the  period 
when  the  tribal  groups  of  the  ancestors  of  the  Greek 
and  Roman  peoples  wandered  into  the  territories 
upon  which  they  afterwards  founded  the  two  last  and 
greatest  civilisations  of  the  ancient  world,  they  pos- 
sessed that  type  of  social  organisation  which,  as 


I7O  WESTERN  CIVILISATION 

already  mentioned,  prevailed  at  one  time  amongst  all 
the  leading  peoples  of  the  world.  In  it  we  have 
already  clearly  outlined,  not  only  the  fundamental 
conception  which,  throughout  the  whole  period  of 
Greek  and  Roman  history,  underlies  the  bond  of 
citizenship ;  but  also  the  direct  evidence  of  the  re- 
lationship of  that  bond  to  the  institution  of  Ancestor 
Worship,  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  an  immense  period 
of  military  development  in  the  still  earlier  past,  on 
the  other. 

Within  these  early  tribal  groups,  each  of  which 
existed  quite  apart  and  independent  of  the  others,  we 
find  the  members  held  together  under  conditions  of 
most  extraordinary  severity.  The  privilege  of  mem- 
bership of  the  group  is  hedged  round  with  the  most 
jealous  precautions.  Admission  from  the  outside  is 
almost  impossible,  or  is  at  best  permitted  only  under 
the  most  rare  and  exceptional  circumstances  or  condi- 
tions ;  and  the  theory  underlying  the  membership  of 
the  groups  is  invariably  that  of  blood-relationship,  to 
which  is  attached  a  religious  significance  of  the  first 
importance. 

When  we  inquire  what  is  the  nature  of  this  signifi- 
cant blood-relationship,  we  have  in  view  at  once  the 
source  from  whence  springs  the  entire  conception 
of  citizenship,  with  its  peculiarly  exacting  demands, 
its  unexampled  exclusiveness,  and  its  extraordinary 
potency  and  efficiency  as  a  principle  in  human  evo- 
lution. The  tribal  groups,  it  has  been  said,  are  reli- 
gious communities  of  the  strictest  type.  But  the 
relationship  of  the  communities  to  the  deities  who 
are  worshipped  is  always  the  same.  These  deities 
invariably  appear  as  gods  or  deified  heroes,  from 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  171 

whom  direct  descent  is  claimed  by  the  whole  group. 
This  is  the  origin  of  the  conception  of  blood-relation- 
ship, to  which  is  attached  a  religious  significance  of 
the  first  importance.  It  is  from  this  conception  that 
there  springs,  naturally  and  inevitably,  the  institution 
of  a  citizenship  to  which  is  attached  a  sense  of  exclu- 
siveness  and  of  superiority  to  all  outsiders  which  is 
almost  beyond  conception  at  the  present  day.1 

As  the  deities  worshipped  are  supposed  to  belong 
to  the  community  alone,  to  be  its  protectors  in  peace, 
and  its  associates  and  leaders  in  war ;  there  springs 
inevitably  from  the  conception  of  common  descent 
from  deified  ancestors  a  system  of  morality  the  exclu- 
siveness  of  which  it  is  almost  impossible  for  us  to 
fully  realise ;  a  system  of  morality  in  which  there  is 
to  be  distinguished  a  feeling  of  obligation  to  regard 
all  outside  the  tie  of  the  resulting  moral-religious 
citizenship,  as  not  only  without  the  pale  of  all  duty 
and  obligation,  and  beyond  the  range  of  even  those 
feelings  which  to  us  seem  to  be  the  outcome  of  a  con- 
ception of  a  common  humanity  ;  but  as  persons  whom 
it  would  actually  be  a  kind  of  sacrilege  to  admit  under 
any  circumstances  as  equals. 

The  enormous  political  significance  of  this  concep- 
tion will  be  immediately  evident.  During  the  whole 
period  of  the  history  of  Greek  and  Roman  peoples,  it 
may  be  distinguished,  accordingly,  that  there  are 

*The  visible  evidence  of  the  possession  of  tribal  blood,  and  at  a 
later  stage  of  citizenship  in  the  Greek  States,  was,  accordingly,  to  use 
the  expressive  words  of  Mr.  Seebohm,  "  the  undisputed  participation, 
as  one  of  kindred  in  the  common  religious  ceremonies,  from  which  the 
blood-polluted  and  the  stranger-in-blood  are  strictly  shut  out"  (  The 
Structure  of  Greek  Tribal  Society,  by  Hugh  E.  Seebohm,  p.  4  ;  see 
also  Fowler's  City-State  of  the  Greeks  ami  A'omans,  pp.  28-33). 


172  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

always  two  fundamental  ideas  underlying  the  bond  of 
citizenship.  In  the  first  place,  it  has  a  deep  religious 
significance ;  in  the  second  place,  this  significance  is 
associated  with  the  conception  of  exclusive  blood- 
relationship  in  the  State.1  Down  to  a  comparatively 
late  period  in  Roman  history  we  may  trace  both  these 
ideas  surviving,  however  degraded  the  form  under 
which  they  have  come  to  exist.  Looking  back  over  that 
history,  it  may  be  said  of  the  Romans,  in  words  used 
by  Professor  Dill  in  speaking  of  the  idealised  genius 
of  the  Latin  peoples  in  the  last  days  of  the  Western 
empire,  "  In  every  step  of  that  marvellous  career  the 
ancient  gods  had  been  their  partners.  The  forms  of 
its  ancestral  religion  were  inextricably  intertwined 
with  the  whole  fabric  of  the  State.  Imbedded  in  law, 
language,  literature,  the  deepest  instincts  of  the  peo- 
ple, her  ancient  worship  seemed  inseparable  from  the 
very  identity  of  Rome.  The  true  Roman,  even 
though  his  religious  faith  might  not  be  very  deep  or 
warm,  inherited  the  most  ancient  belief  of  his  race 
that  the  gods  of  a  city  were  sharers  in  all  its  for- 
tunes."2 The  same  ideas  are  always  in  evidence 
throughout  Greek  history.  In  Athens,  says  Mr. 
Seebohm,  "  the  actual  similarity  of  the  sentiment 

1  The  confidence  in  an  ultimately  divine  origin  was,  to  use  the  words 
of  Professor  Wheeler,  "  an  essential  part  of  every  family  tree  among  the 
noble  families.     All  the  great  heroes  were  sons  of  gods.     If  Minos  was 
the  son  of  Zeus,  Theseus  must  needs,  as  Bacchylides'  paean  shows  it, 
prove  himself  Poseidon's  son.     The  gods  were,  as  ancestors,  dignified 
to  be  the  citizens  of  honour  in  the  State.     That  was  what  made  the 
State  and  gave  it  its  dignity.     It  was  a  fraternity  in  which  great  im- 
mortals, known  as  gods,  were  members  "  (Alexander  the  Great,  by  B.  I. 
Wheeler,  Professor  of  Greek,  Cornell  University). 

2  Roman   Society  in  the  last  Century  of  the  Western  Empire,  by 
Samuel  Dill,  i.  c.  i. 


vi  ASCENDENCY   OF  THE  PRESENT  173 

which  surrounded  the  possession  of  the  privileges  of 
tribal  blood  and  the  title  to  citizenship  can  hardly  be 
exaggerated." 1  Throughout  the  Greek  States  the 
bond  of  citizenship  was  everywhere  regarded  as  one 
possessing  deep  religious  significance,  this  signifi- 
cance, we  may  distinguish,  being  always  accepted  as 
resting  on  a  supposed  blood  relationship,  "  the  citizen 
inheriting  with  his  blood  responsibilities  towards  the 
community  into  which  he  was  born,  as  towards  a 
larger  kindred."  2 

The  exclusive  and  absorbing  demand  of  the  claims 
of  this  larger  kindred  on  the  whole  moral  and  reli- 
gious nature  of  the  individual  altogether  exceeded,  in 
the  ancient  world,  even  the  highest  modern  ideals  of 
duty  and  obligation  within  the  circle  of  family  rela- 
tionship. We  may  obtain  some  idea  of  the  peculiar 
religious  sanctity  attached  to  the  bond  of  citizenship, 
and  of  the  spirit  which  pervaded  the  fabric  of  the 
ancient  State,  from  Cicero's  assertion  that  no  man 
could  lay  claim  to  the  title  of  good  who  would  hesitate 
to  die  for  his  country ;  and  that  the  love  owed  by  the 
citizen  towards  this  larger  community  of  which  he 
was  a  member  was  holier  and  more  profound  than 
that  due  from  him  to  his  nearest  kinsman. 

Whatever  other  characteristic  may  be  expected  to 
be  associated  with,  or  to  proceed  from,  such  a  type  of 
social  organisation,  the  evolutionist  at  once  distin- 
guishes in  it  its  significant  feature.  We  have  repre- 
sented therein  the  most  potent  principle  of  military 
efficiency  which  it  would  be  possible  to  conceive. 
Under  no  other  type  of  social  order  could  the  princi- 

1  The  Structure  of  Greek  Tribal  Society,  by  Hugh  E.  Scebohm, 
p.  138.  2  Op.  cit. 


1/4  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

pie  of  military  ascendency  so  surely  reach  its  culmi- 
nating stage.  Under  no  other  theory  of  society  could 
the  ideal  of  conquest,  by  a  people  naturally  fitted  to 
conquer,  lead  so  directly  to  conquest  on  a  universal 
scale. 

As,  accordingly,  we  watch  now  the  isolated  groups 
of  the  original  stock  from  which  sprang  the  civilisa- 
tions of  Greece  and  Rome  concentrating  upon  each 
other  amid  the  clash  of  arms  and  the  stress  of  inces- 
sant warfare,  the  whole  process  of  life  is,  to  the  evo- 
lutionist, characterised  by  a  deeper  meaning  than  he 
finds  anywhere  disclosed  in  merely  political  studies 
of  these  civilisations.  All  the  details  and  features 
which  he  has  spread  before  him  in  history  relate,  he 
sees,  to  the  later  stages  of  a  world-process  in  which 
the  final  causes  are  innate,  and  of  which  all  the 
master-principles  have  worked  together  from  the 
beginning  towards  an  end  which  is  inevitable. 

When  the  City-State  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  civ- 
ilisations appears  in  view,  in  the  full  processes  of  its 
life  as  revealed  in  history,  it  stands  before  us  with  all 
the  essential  characteristics  that  have  distinguished 
the  social  organisation  in  its  earlier  stages  now  indeli- 
bly stamped  upon  it.  The  early  type  of  caste  society 
to  which  Homer  introduces  us  —  in  which,  to  use 
words  of  Mr.  Mahaffy,  "  the  key  to  the  comprehen- 
sion of  all  details  depends  upon  one  leading  princi- 
ple, that  consideration  is  due  to  the  members  of  the 
class  and  even  to  its  dependents,  but  that  beyond  its 
pale  even  the  most  deserving  are  of  no  account  save 
as  objects  of  plunder"1  —  is  verging  at  last  towards 
the  ideal  of  universal  dominion ;  resting,  however, 

1  Social  Life  in  Greece,  by  J.  P.  Mahaffy,  p.  44. 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  175 

ultimately  on  the  same  characteristic  and  vital  con- 
cept as  at  the  beginning,  namely,  that  of  exclusive 
citizenship. 

As  we  watch  the  steps  in  the  transition  in  which 
the  various  elements  of  the  originally  isolated  groups 
become  the  City-State,  grouped  round  the  common 
hearth  of  the  State  with  an  official  priesthood  and  a 
common  religious  tradition,  we  may  clearly  distinguish 
how,  not  only  the  political  institutions,  the  prevailing 
type  of  social  organisation,  and  the  existing  standards 
of  social  morality,  but  the  very  life-principle  of  the 
State  itself  are  indissolubly  associated  with  the  same 
characteristic  causes  which  gave  to  the  original  groups 
their  peculiar  strength  and  individuality. 

There  is  in  this  respect  no  difference  to  be  made 
in  any  fundamental  governing  principle,  between  the 
Greek  States  and  Rome  as  we  see  them  in  history. 
In  each  we  have  developed,  as  Mr.  Fowler  expresses 
it,1  the  same  kind  of  polity,  in  which,  although  directed 
to  different  aims,  the  same  governing  principles  carry 
the  same  form  of  political  organisation  through  simi- 
lar stages  of  growth.  In  each  we  have  the  same  con- 
ception of  exclusive  citizenship;  the  same  tradition  of 
community  of  blood  by  descent,  to  which  religious 
significance  is  attached  ;  the  same  institution  of  com- 
mon worship,  associated  now  with  the  State  and  in 
the  hands  of  a  civil  priesthood,  but  everywhere  pre- 
senting with  its  omens,  auguries,  and  public  rites  the 
original  characteristics  of  that  stage  of  religious  devel- 
opment in  which  all  the  functions  relate  to  material 
ends,  and  in  which  the  centre  of  all  consciousness 

1  The  City-State  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  by  W.  W.  Fowler, 
pp.  5,  6. 


1/6  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

is  in  the  present  time  and  in  the  existing  political 
organisation.1  In  the  later  epoch  of  the  State  the 
greater  gods  of  the  tribes  have  developed  into  State 
deities  whose  rites  and  ceremonies  are  performed  by 
a  priesthood,  always  presenting  to  us  the  feature  that 
its  office  and  functions  are  regarded  as  civil.  The 
principal  aim  of  both  is  considered  to  be  to  avert 
evil  from  the  existing  State,  to  obtain  material 
favour  for  it  from  the  deities,  and  generally  to  keep 
it  on  good  terms  with  its  protectors.2 

As  soon  as  we  begin  to  understand  the  nature  of 
the  type  of  polity  we  are  regarding,  we  perceive  now 
how  the  almost  inconceivable  feeling  of  hatred  and 
contempt  for  all  outsiders  springs  as  a  matter  of 
course  from  the  governing  principles  of  the  social 
organisation.  It  is  the  distinctive  product  of  Ances- 
tor Worship —  the  idea  of  exclusive  citizenship  pro- 
ceeding from  community  of  blood  by  descent — which 
constitutes,  we  see,  the  pivot  upon  which  turns  the 
entire  political,  social,  moral,  and  religious  life  of  the 
ancient  world.  Throughout  the  history  of  the  Greek 
and  Roman  peoples  we  may  distinguish  that  there 
runs  one  leading  idea.  Each  people,  says  Professor 

1  Cf.  The  Institutes  of  Justinian  (Sandars),  Introd. 

2  Behind  the  greater  deities,  in  gradual  transition  from  the  general 
to  the  individual  interest,  we  have  a  great  number  of  others  whose 
influence   is   conceived   of  as   operating  within   gradually  narrowing 
spheres.      We  have  the  deities  or  spirits  of  harvests,  of  seasons,  of 
occupations,  of  times,  of  places,  of  minor   localities,  and  of  minor 
events.     In  these  lesser  conceptions  also  it  may  be  observed  that  we 
are  always  in  the  presence  of  the  fact,  which  is  distinctive  of  a  form  of 
religious  belief  in  the  lower  of  the  two  categories  mentioned.     It  is  in 
the  desire  to  avert  evil,  or  to  obtain  aid  or  material  advantage  in  the 
present  time  for  those  practising  the  prescribed  rites  and  ceremonies 
of  the  religion,  that  we  have  the  main  object  of  its  adherents. 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE   PRESENT  177 

Fowler,  "  believed  in  certain  great  deities  whom  they 
associated  with  their  history  and  their  fortunes  ;  and 
each  looked  on  these  deities  as  localised  in  their 
cities,  as  belonging  to  none  but  themselves,  and  as 
incapable  of  deserting  them  except  as  a  consequence 
of  their  own  shortcomings."  J  In  all  this  the  identity 
of  the  idea,  which  prompted  the  attitude  of  contempt 
for  those  outside  the  bond  of  citizenship,  with  the 
fundamental  conception  of  Ancestor  Worship  —  citi- 
zenship founded  on  exclusive  religious  community  of 
blood  by  descent  —  is  unmistakable. 

In  the  legal  codes  of  the  ancient  world,  as  Sohm 
points  out,  the  resulting  fact  of  the  antithesis  of 
mutually  exclusive  States  was  an  inherent  and  funda- 
mental principle.2  Much  has  been  written  in  a  super- 
ficial spirit  respecting  the  liberal  and  tolerant  ideas 
which  prevailed  in  the  later  period  at  which  the 
spread  of  Roman  conquest  had  brought  the  Roman 
rule  into  contact  with  a  multitute  of  foreign  peoples ; 
when,  to  use  words  of  Sandars,  Rome  was  engaged  in 
"connecting  herself  with  her  subject  allies  by  con- 
ceding them  privileges  proportionate  to  their  impor- 
tance or  their  services  "  ;  and3  when  the  ius  Latinum, 
the  ius  Italicnnt,  and  last  of  all,  the  ius  gentium,  were 
already  amplifying,  modifying,  and  evading  the  stern 
exclusive  spirit  of  the  original  ius  civile.  But  the 
evolutionist  sees  how  brief  in  the  life-history  of  a 
world-process,  which  had  already  passed  its  climax, 

1  The  City-State  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  by  W.  Warde  Fowler, 

PP-  3»  4- 

2  The  Institutes  of  Roman  Law,  by  Rudolph  Sohm  (Eng.  trs.  by 
J.  C.  Lcdlie),  pp.  1 1 6,  117. 

8  The  Institutes  of  Justinian,  with  Introduction,  by  Thomas  Collett 
Sandars. 

N 


WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

are  these  phenomena,  and  how  they  represent,  not  a 
process  of  life  at  all,  but  one  of  decay.  It  was  with 
the  spirit  of  the  ius  civile  that  the  life-principle  of  the 
military  civilisation  of  Rome  was  associated.  The 
later  spirit  had  not  only  no  power  to  stay  the  ebbing 
vitality  of  the  Roman  empire,  but  it  was  itself  in  one 
sense  the  very  symbol  of  the  causes  which  were  pro- 
ducing it.  In  an  eloquent  passage  of  the  later  period 
in  Tacitus1  we  have  the  boast  of  an  emperor2  as  to 
the  men  of  other  lands  that  the  Roman  State  had 
admitted  and  absorbed  as  citizens.  But  this  was  not 
the  real  spirit  of  Rome.  Rather,  in  the  words  of  a 
recent  writer,  "  she  protested,  even  while  she  admitted 
to  her  citizenship  the  Greek  poets,  the  Asiatic  and 
Egyptian  sacred  rites,  the  foreigners  who  thronged 
inside  her  walls  and  who  ascended  to  her  seats  of 
honour.  She  detested  every  society  which  had  not 
asked  her  permission  to  exist."3 

This  was  the  true  genius  of  the  Roman  State  in 
the  period  of  its  vigorous  life.  It  was  the  spirit  which 
had  made  Rome  the  mistress  of  the  world.  It  was 
the  spirit  which  represented  the  inner  life  of  that 
immense  epoch  of  human  development  which  had 
culminated  in  the  ancient  civilisations.  It  was  the 
spirit  which  was  representative  of  the  epoch  of  force ; 
the  true  world-spirit  of  the  era  of  the  merciless, 
material,  but  omnipotent  present. 

From  the  fundamental  conceptions  upon  which 
the  ancient  State  rested,  there  was,  therefore,  almost 
entirely  shut  out  all  view  of  these  wider  ideals  of 

1  Tac.  Ann.,  lib.  xi.  c.  xxiv. 

2  Claudius  in  the  Roman  Senate. 

8  "  The  Genius  of  Rome,"  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  clxxxxi. 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  179 

duty  and  obligation  with  which  we  are  about  to 
become  familiar  in  the  second  epoch  of  social  evolu- 
tion. All  those  activities,  for  instance,  which  in  the 
higher  forms  of  religion  spring  from  the  individual's 
sense  of  his  relationship  to  the  infinite  and  the  uni- 
versal tended  in  the  ancient  State  to  express  them- 
selves solely  in  relation  to  the  ideals  involved  in  the 
conception  of  exclusive  citizenship.  The  entire  con- 
sciousness in  its  outward  expressions  was  related  to 
activities  bounded  in  their  aim  by  the  horizon  of  the 
existing  political  organisation.  The  sum  of  individual 
and  social  energy  was,  as  it  were,  caught  in  the  sweep 
of  a  process  of  which  the  culminating  expression  was  a 
type  of  society  in  which  every  form  of  human  activity 
tended  to  be  raised  to  its  highest  expression  in  terms 
of  the  present. 

The  existing  political  State  embraced,  accordingly, 
the  whole  aim,  meaning,  responsibility,  and  interest 
in  the  life  of  the  individual.  In  the  writings  of  the 
Greek  philosophers,  and  in  most  of  the  works  of  the 
Roman  political  writers,  we  encounter  this  conception 
at  every  turn.  As  we  follow  Aristotle  through  the 
pages  of  the  two  of  his  works  which,  of  all  the  prod- 
ucts of  the  Greek  mind,  have  probably  exercised  the 
widest  influence  on  the  modern  philosophy  of  society, 
namely,  the  "Politics"  and  the  "Ethics,"  we  may 
perceive  that  we  are  everywhere  in  the  presence  of  a 
fundamental  idea.  It  is  that  the  goal  of  all  human 
effort  is  in  the  attainment  of  the  most  perfect  possi- 
ble life  in  the  existing  political  organisation.  It  is 
the  State  which  is  made  the  theatre  of  all  the  ends  to 
which  consciousness  is  related.  It  is  out  of  this  con- 
ception that  there  proceeds  the  scheme  of  individual 


180  WESTERN   CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

ethics,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  political  theory,  on 
the  other,  throughout  the  ancient  world.  In  all  the 
discussions,  for  instance,  which  Aristotle  is  conduct- 
ing as  to  the  nature  of  virtue,  we  always  come  in 
sight,  in  the  last  analysis,  of  the  fact,  curiously  strange 
at  first  to  our  minds,  that  virtue  is  conceived  as  a  form 
of  political  activity.  Similarly,  in  all  theories  of  the 
State  in  the  ancient  world,  we  always  come  into  view 
of  that  fundamental  conception  which  pervades  the 
political  literature  of  Greece  and  Rome,  that,  to  use 
the  words  of  Professor  Mahaffy,  "all  citizens  should 
be  regarded  as  the  property  of  the  State  ; " 1  or  that 
—  to  put  it  in  Bluntschli's  more  detailed  phrases  — 
the  sovereignty  of  the  State  was  absolute,  that  indi- 
vidual freedom  as  against  the  State  was  unknown,  and 
that  the  existing  political  relations  embraced  the  whole 
life  of  the  individual,  the  whole  range  of  his  duties 
and  activities  —  civil,  social,  moral,  and  religious.2 

The  enormous  military  significance  of  such  a  con- 
ception of  society,  when  associated  with  the  principle 
of  exclusive  citizenship,  resting  in  the  last  resort  on  a 
moral-religious  basis,  is  only  fully  brought  into  promi- 
nence on  reflection.  The  deeper  we  go  in  the  study 
of  the  life  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  peoples  at  the 
period  of  their  highest  development,  the  more  clearly 
does  the  fact  reveal  itself  that  the  State  as  organised 
was  a  condition  in  which  the  principal  end  and  busi- 
ness of  the  people  was  war ;  not  simply  from  the 
desires  of  the  citizens,  but  from  causes  which  were 
innate  in  the  State  itself.  It  was  of  necessity  an 
organisation  of  society  in  which,  to  use  the  forcible 

1  Problems  in  Greek  History,  by  J.  P.  Mahaffy,  p.  89. 

8  The  Theory  of  the  State,  by  J.  K.  Bluntschli,  p.  58  et  scq. 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  l8l 

words  of  Bagehot,  "every  intellectual  gain  was  made 
use  of,  was  invested,  and  taken  out  in  war."  l  An 
organisation,  that  is  to  say,  in  which,  as  Plato  makes 
Clinias  of  Crete  say  in  the  Laws,  the  supreme  end  of 
effort  was  victory  in  war,  when  "  that  which  men  call 
peace  is  only  a  name,  the  reality  being  war,  according 
to  nature,  to  all  against  all  States."  2  It  was  a  condi- 
tion of  society  in  which  the  only  limit  to  conquest 
was,  therefore,  the  successful  resistance  of  others,  and 
of  which  the  only  possible  final  ideal  was  universal 
dominion. 

Proceeding  from  this  constitution  of  the  State,  with 
its  inherent  conception  of  exclusive  citizenship,  we 
see  how  naturally  and  inevitably  there  arose,  therefore, 
all  those  social  features  which  present  the  ancient 
civilisations  to  the  imagination  of  the  present  time 
as  the  incarnation  of  the  rule  of  force.  It  was  the 
accepted  position  in  the  Greek  States,  as  it  remained 
to  the  end  a  fundamental  principle  of  the  public  law  of 
Rome,  that  the  lands  and  persons  of  the  conquered  be- 
longed absolutely  to  the  conquerors.3  We  have,  accord- 
ingly, always  in  sight  the  spectacle  in  each  case  of  a 
comparatively  small  citizen  class  living  amongst  vast 
populations  to  which  even  the  elementary  rights  of 
humanity  were  denied,  and  the  existence  of  which 
was  for  the  most  part  the  direct  result  of  war.  In 
many  of  the  Greek  cities  the  slaves  must  have  con- 
siderably outnumbered  the  free  population;  and, 
although  estimates,  in  which  the  former  have  been 

1  Physics  and  Politics,  by  Walter  Bagehot,  p.  49.  2  Laws,  I. 

*  The  Institutes  of  Koman  Law,  by  Rudolph  Sohm ;  Inst.  Just., 
lib.  i.  tit.  iii. ;  and  Public  Lands  and  Agrarian  Laws  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  by  Andrew  Stephenson  (Johns  Hopkins  University  Studies). 


1 82  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

made  to  appear  as  vastly  more  numerous  than  the 
latter,  are  probably  exaggerations,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  slave  population  was  large  in  propor- 
tion to  the  citizen  class.1  The  citizen  looked  down 
with  contempt,  not  only  upon  this  population  of  slaves, 
but  also  upon  large  numbers  of  freedmen  and  unquali- 
fied residents  who  were  similarly  excluded  permanently 
from  all  participation  in  the  rights  of  the  State.  "  In 
no  case  could  the  freedman,  the  foreigner,  or  even  the 
dependent  ally  obtain  citizenship  by  residence  or  even 
by  birth  in  the  land."2  At  the  beginning  of  the 
Peloponnesian  war,  the  slave  population  of  Attica  is 
put  by  Beloch,3  in  a  moderate  estimate,  at  100,000,  as 

1Cf.  An  Essay  on  Western  Civilisation  in  its  Economic  Aspects 
(Ancient  Times),  by  W.  Cunningham,  ii.  c.  ii. 

2  History  of  Federal  Government  (Greek  Federations),  by  E.  A. 
Freeman,  vol.  i.  c.  ii. 

8  Bevolkerung.  Cf.  Fowler's  City-State  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans, 
c.  vi.  Beloch's  estimate  is  the  most  moderate  of  those  recently  made  in 
which  the  subject  has  been  carefully  considered.  Wallon,  after  an 
examination  of  the  conditions  of  Attica  about  this  period,  gives  the 
following  detailed  estimate  :  — 

"Nous  trouvons  done  en  recapitulant  :  — 

Esclaves  domestiques 40,000 

Esclaves  agricoles 3S»ooo 

Esclaves  des  mines 10,000 

Esclaves  employes  dans  1'industrie,  le  commerce  et 

la  navigation 90,000 

Enfants  au-dessous  de  12  ans  pour  40,000  femmes          20,000 
Vieillards  au-dessus  de  70  ans        ....          6,000 


Total 201,000 

Non  compris  les  esclaves  publics,  parmi  lesquels  1 200  archers  scythes. 

A  quoi  il  faut  joindre  la  population  libre  :  — 

Atheniens 67,000 

Meteques 40,000 

En  tout,  de  308,000  a  310,000   habitants"   (Histoire  de  I'Esclavage 

dans  rAntiquile,  par  H.  Wallon,  t.  i.  c.  viii.). 


VI  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  183 

against  a  free  population  of  135,000.  The  conditions 
were  the  same  in  Rome.1  The  citizenship  of  the 
Roman  City-State  was  a  privilege  long  jealously 
guarded ;  and  the  extensions  of  the  franchise  which 
were  eventually  made  came,  as  we  have  seen,  only 
with  the  ebbing  vitality  of  the  principles  upon  which 
the  State  had  been  founded.  Probably  at  no  time  did 
the  free  populations  of  the  entire  Roman  empire  out- 
number the  slaves.  Estimating  from  the  Roman  cen- 
sus of  684,  Mommsen  puts  the  free  population  of  the 
Italian  peninsula  at  six  or  seven  millions,  as  against 
the  slave  population  of  thirteen  or  fourteen  millions  ;2 
and  Gibbon  estimates 3  that  in  the  time  of  Claudius 
the  slaves  were,  throughout  the  entire  Roman  world, 
at  least  equal  in  number  to  the  free  inhabitants.4 

Yet  we  do  not  reach  the  true  inwardness  of  the 
principle  upon  which  the  institution  of  slavery  rested 
in  the  ancient  State  from  these  facts.  It  is  the 
custom  to  associate  the  condition  of  slavery  with  an 

1  With  the  growth  of  luxury  in   Rome   the  employment  of  slaves 
greatly  increased.     "  Ce  qui  resulte  aussi,  je  pense,  de  1'impression  des 
temoignages  que  nous  avons  reunis,  c'est  que  1'emploi  de  ces  esclaves 
etait  beaucoup  plus  repandu  chez  les  Romains  que  chez  les  Grecs,  dans 
la  classe  aisee  "  (ffistoire  de  I'Esclavage  dans  rAntiquite,  t.  ii.  c.  iii.). 

2  Mommsen's  History  of  Rome,  trs.  by  W.  P.  Dickson,  vol.  ii.  p.  76. 
8  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  c.  ii. 

4  Wallon,  after  an  exhaustive  examination  of  the  conditions  in  the 
Roman  State  as  it  approaches  the  period  of  the  empire,  concludes  : 
"  Ces  evaluations  sont  trup  hypothetiques  pour  que  nous  cherchions  a 
leur  donner  par  le  calcul  un  faux  air  de  precision  ;  mais  il  nous  semble 
qu'au  milieu  de  tant  d'incertitudes,  on  peut  s'arrSter  a  ces  conclusions, 
savoir  :  qu'i  la  diminution  du  nombre  des  hommes  libres  a  correspondu, 
generalemcnt,  une  augmentation  des  esclaves,  et  que  ce  dernier  nombre 
plus  faible  que  1'autrc  au  commencement  de  la  seconde  guerre  punique, 
1'a  maintenant  au  moins  egale  "  (//isfoire  de  fEsclavage  dans 
quite,  t.  ii.  c.  iii.). 


1 84  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

inferior  race.  But  the  cultured  Greek  made  slaves 
of  other  Greeks  when  they  became  his  by  conquest 
in  war,  or  by  other  recognised  methods.  During  the 
historic  period  slaves  were  made  not  only  in  contests 
between  Hellenes  and  barbarians,  but  between  Hel- 
lenes and  Hellenes ;  and  the  fact  that  during  this 
period  slaves  in  Greece  were  mostly  of  outside  races 
was,  as  Bluemner  points  out,1  due  simply  to  the  fact 
that  captive  Greek  slaves  were  generally  exchanged. 
In  later  Rome  the  talents  of  cultivated  slaves  became 
a  large  source  of  income.  The  richer  capitalists 
had  often  great  numbers  of  educated  slaves  who,  as 
writers,  lecturers,  bankers,  physicians,  or  architects, 
often  earned  large  profits,  which  they  were  required 
to  turn  over  to  their  masters. 

It  is  only  slowly,  and  as  the  mind  is  steeped  in  the 
spirit  of  the  ancient  civilisations,  that  the  real  nature 
of  the  immense  interval  which  separates  their  inner 
life  from  that  of  the  modern  world  begins  to  be  real- 
ised. It  often  comes  as  a  surprise,  for  instance,  to 
the  modern  mind  that  a  cultivated  citizen  of  the 
Roman  or  Greek  world  could  calmly  consign  an  edu- 
cated fellow-creature  to  all  the  unutterable  degrada- 
tion that  the  position  of  slave  in  that  period  involved, 
simply  because  the  latter  had  been  taken  prisoner 
honourably  in  war.  If,  however,  we  turn  to  the 
thought  of  even  so  late,  and  comparatively  liberal, 
a  period  as  that  of  the  Institutes  of  Justinian,  we 
have  the  explanation.  In  the  Institutes  we  find  it 
asserted  that  "  slaves  are  denominated  servi  because 
generals  order  their  captives  to  be  sold,  and  by  this 
means  are  wont  to  preserve  them  and  not  to  put 

1  Lfben  und  Sitten  der  Griechen  (English  trs.  by  A.  Zimmern),  c.  xv. 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  185 

them  to  death." 1  The  inner  meaning  of  these  words, 
in  which  there  is  expressed  the  still  surviving  spirit 
of  the  ancient  civilisations,  only  becomes  visible  on 
reflection.  The  pride,  the  contempt,  the  intolerant 
exclusiveness  of  citizenship  lurking  in  them  is  to  us 
almost  inconceivable.  For  they  mean  nothing  more 
or  less  than  that  it  had  been  the  spirit  of  the  Roman 
law  to  assume,  as  a  matter  of  course,  that  a  person 
who  was  at  war  with  the  exclusive  body  of  citizens, 
and  who,  therefore,  was  outside  its  claims,  had  abso- 
lutely no  right  to  exist.  Any  position,  therefore, 
however  degraded,  to  which  he  might  be  consigned, 
had  been  looked  upon,  not  in  the  light  of  a  punish- 
ment, but  as  a  mitigation  of  the  death  penalty ;  and, 
therefore,  as  a  favour  for  which  he  had  every  cause 
to  be  grateful. 

A  certain  detachment  of  mind  from  tendencies 
prevailing  in  the  recent  uncritical  and  unscientific 
past  is,  in  short,  necessary  to  a  perception  of  the 
full  measure  of  the  difference  which  separates  the 
modern  spirit  from  that  of  the  epoch  of  human 
evolution  here  represented.  Comparisons  of  out- 
ward forms  and  superficial  resemblances,  common 
in  past  studies  of  the  life-principles  of  the  ancient 
civilisations,  are  in  the  highest  degree  misleading.2 

1  Servi  autem  ex  eo  appellati  sunt,  quod  imperatores  captivos  vendere 
jubent  ac  per  hoc  servare  nee  occidere  solent  (fnstit.  ftut.  lib.  i.  tit.  iii.). 

2  The  standpoint  in  Crete's  comparisons  is  referred  to  elsewhere. 
Compare,  however,  Seelcy's  much  more  recent  standpoint  in  many  of 
the  lectures  included  in  his  Introduction  to  Political  Science  (e.g.  lee. 
vii.).     At  times  it  almost  seems  as  if  Seeley  conceived  the  fundamental 
difference  between  our  modern  civilisation  and  that  of  the  ancient  States 
to  be  no  more  than  that  arising  from  the  larger  size  of  the  territory  of 
the  modern  State,  and  the  problems  of  government  by  representation 
involved  in  it. 


1 86  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

If  we  turn  to  Aristotle's  Ethics,  we  observe  the 
highest  good  defined  as  consisting  in  "virtuous 
energies,"1  and  happiness  defined  as  "energy  di- 
rected to  the  pursuit  of  virtue."2  Such  terms  may 
be,  and  sometimes  are,  even  by  current  writers, 
taken  as  if  they  were  intended  in  the  sense  in 
which  we  use  them.  But  when  we  look  closely  we 
see  that  they  imply,  in  reality,  something  so  sub- 
stantially different  as  to  be  almost  beyond  the  pos- 
sibility of  immediate  comprehension.  For,  when  we 
turn  to  Aristotle's  Politics,  we  see  that  the  "  virtue  " 
of  which  he  is  speaking  is  merely  a  form  of  activity 
related  to  ends  comprised  within  the  limits  of  the 
existing  State ;  and  that  even  in  this  sense  its  prac- 
tice is  limited  to  a  small  class.  To  the  "barbarians" 
Aristotle  considered  the  Greeks  had  no  more  duties 
than  to  wild  beasts. 

In  the  scheme  of  a  well-governed  State  which 
Aristotle  has  in  view  in  the  Politics,  it  was  ac- 
cordingly asserted  that  "  none  of  the  citizens  should 
be  permitted  to  exercise  any  mechanic  employment 
or  to  follow  merchandise;"3  and  yet  further,  "if 
choice  could  be  exercised,  the  husbandmen  should 
by  all  means  be  slaves."*  The  reason  given  for 
these  ideals  reveals  at  once  the  vastness  of  the 
interval  which  separates  us  from  the  author.  It  is 
that  all  these  classes  must  be  excluded  from  the  pos- 
sibility of  being  virtuous." 5  They  have  no  part, 
that  is  to  say,  in  the  principles  which  are  assumed 
to  uphold  the  privileged  life  of  the  select  body  of 
persons  constituting  the  exclusive  State.  It  is  the 

1  Ethics,  i.  and  x.  8  Politics,  vii.  ix.  6  Ibid.  vii.  ix. 

1  Ibid.  *  Ibid.  vii.  x. 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  187 

practice  of  these  principles,  by  those  whose  interests 
they  exclusively  concern,  that  constitutes  virtue. 

In  all  the  discussions  by  the  Greek  writers  as 
to  the  highest  good,  alike  in  politics,  in  ethics,  and 
in  religion,  the  one  fact  which  we  have  continually 
to  note  is  the  prevailing  absence  of  the  conceptions 
which  spring  from  that  sense  of  relationship  to  the 
universal  and  to  the  infinite  which  so  profoundly 
affects  the  higher  thought  and  action  of  the  modern 
world.  In  Plato's  Republic  the  ideal  State  and  the 
individual,  exclusive  and  privileged,  are  only  mul- 
tiples or  reflections  of  the  qualities  of  each  other.  The 
horizon  of  desires  related  to  the  ascendant  present 
is  the  horizon  of  the  ideal  life  of  each.  The  fact, 
which  may  be  distinguished  in  any  of  the  character- 
istic conceptions  of  the  Republic  (as,  for  example 
those  in  the  fifth  Book)  is  that  the  meaning  attached 
to  all  qualities  and  institutions  —  to  individual  virtue, 
social  morality,  the  sexual  relations,  and  even  to  the 
rights  of  life  itself  —  falls  completely  within  these 
limits.1 

It  is  not,  of  course,  to  be  expected  that  in  a 
period  of  the  world's  history,  when  the  first  epoch 
of  social  evolution  was  soon  to  merge  into  the 
second,  that  conceptions  of  relationship  to  the  infi- 
nite and  the  universal  should  be  absolutely  unrep- 

1  One  of  the  proposals  under  discussion  is  the  best  method  of  bear- 
ing children  to  the  State.  That  for  which  approval  is  claimed  is  that 
woman  in  the  ideal  State  should  bear  children  to  the  State  to  the  age 
of  40,  the  man  being  bound  to  the  age  of  55.  After  this  the  sexes 
were  to  be  free  to  follow  their  own  inclinations.  If  children  were 
afterwards  conceived  they  were  not  to  be  brought  to  the  light,  or  if 
brought  forth,  were  to  be  exposed  as  creatures  for  whom  no  provision 
was  made  {Rep.  v.). 


1 88  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

resented  in  the  thought  and  literature  of  the  Greek 
period.  But  what  the  scientific  observer  has  always 
to  keep  clearly  in  view  is  the  fact,  that  so  far  as  such 
ideas  existed,  they  simply  had  no  relationship  to  the 
principles  upon  which  society  was  constructed.  The 
key  to  the  comprehension  of  all  details  is  the  one 
never  absent  underlying  assumption  that  the  ideal 
ends  to  which  consciousness  related  were  in  the 
present  time,  and  comprised  within  the  narrow  limits 
of  the  associated  life  of  the  existing  body  of  citizens. 
It  may,  in  consequence,  always  be  distinguished 
that  in  the  last  resort  the  military  ideals  overlie 
and  overrule  all  others.  The  consistent  and  grow- 
ing tendency  of  the  modern  epoch  has  been  to 
ennoble  the  ideal  of  work.  But  it  was  the  business 
of  war  and  of  government,  which  alone  was  ennobled 
in  the  ancient  State.  To  Socrates  it  was  idleness 
which  was  the  sister  of  freedom.  Every  occupation 
which  required  its  follower  to  work  and  to  receive 
pay  was  viewed  with  contempt.  It  made  no  differ- 
ence that  the  condemnation  might  and  did  include 
in  its  sweep  the  greatest  architects,  painters,  and 
sculptors  that  the  world  has  ever  produced.1  To 
Aristotle  the  only  classes  worthy  of  respect  were  the 
citizens  of  a  privileged  and  exclusive  order  of  society 
in  their  capacity  as  soldiers,  judges,  or  priests.2  A 
State  with  a  large  number  of  mechanics  and  few 
soldiers  he  considered  could  not  be  great.3 

1  Cf.  Bluemner,  Leben  und  Sitten  der  Griechen  (Eng.  trans.  A. 
Zimmern,  chap.  xiv.).  The  feeling  of  Greek  society  in  this  respect  is  un- 
mistakable. It  expresses  itself  in  a  continuous  undertone  in  Plato's 
writings.  Sometimes,  as  in  Aristotle,  Politics,  vii.,  it  is  very  marked. 
See  also  Mahaffy,  Social  Life  in  Greece,  chap.  ix. 

a  Politics,  vii.  8  Ibid. 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  189 

The  deeper  we  continue  to  get  beneath  the  surface 
the  more  fully  do  we  realise  how  all-pervading  was 
the  influence  of  these  governing  principles  of  the 
life  of  the  ancient  State,  and  how  absolutely  they 
controlled  the  expression  of  its  energies,  even  in 
directions  where  their  action  is  as  yet,  as  a  general 
rule,  only  imperfectly  perceived.  To  many  modern 
authorities,  for  instance,  it  still  remains  one  of  the 
remarkable  facts  of  history,  unexplained  by  the  geo- 
graphical and  similar  theories  of  Montesquieu,1 
Cousin,  Freeman,  and  others,  why  the  limited  popu- 
lations of  the  Greek  States  should  have  reached  a 
standard  of  excellence  in  nearly  every  form  of  art, 
which  has  since  remained  not  only  unsurpassed,  but 
unapproached  by  any  other  section  of  the  race  —  a 
standard  of  excellence  so  extraordinarily  high,  that 
the  deeper  and  more  scientific  tendencies  of  current 
research  have,  on  the  whole,  brought  with  them  no 
serious  disposition  to  question  the  view  that  Greek 
genius  attained  therein  almost  the  highest  limits  of 
perfection.  The  counterpart  of  the  problem,  equally 
striking,  has  been  that  the  Roman  people,  sprung 
from  a  stock  nearly  related  ethnologically,  developing 
the  same  kind  of  polity,  and  attaining  to  the  greatest 
example  in  history  of  military  rule  and  ordered 
administration,  should  yet  have  displayed  no  corre- 
sponding excellence  in  those  respects  in  which  the 
Greek  genius  reached  the  very  highest  level  of 
perfection. 

What  we  begin  to  see  now,  however,  is  that  the 
explanation  of  this  problem  must  be  considered  to 

1  Most  sulwequcnt  theories  have  been  expansions  of  Montesquieu's 
in  De  f Esprit  ties  Lois,  xiv.-xviii. 


190  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

lie  in  the  fact  of  the  conditions  under  which  the 
principle  of  the  ascendency  of  the  present  reached 
its  culminating  phase  in  Greece.  The  clue  to  the 
problem  is,  moreover,  evidently  related  to  the  same 
cause  in  the  case  of  both  the  Roman  and  Greek 
peoples.  In  Greece,  although  the  military  ideals  were 
exactly  the  same  as  amongst  the  Roman  peoples, 
a  number  of  small  independent  States  long  con- 
tended for  a  mastery,  which  none  was  able  so  defi- 
nitely to  acquire  as  to  enable  it  to  absorb  the  others. 
To  anticipate  the  military  history  of  the  Roman 
universal  empire  was,  therefore,  impossible  in  Greece. 
But  the  genius  of  the  people,  as  expressing  the 
culminating  phase  of  the  principle  of  the  ascendant 
present,  came  to  utter  itself  in  a  different  though  no 
less  characteristic  form,  the  significance  of  which  is 
beginning  to  be  understood  by  the  modern  evolu- 
tionist. 

In  the  Greek  world,  where  self-consciousness  was 
always  related  to  present  ends,  and  where,  there- 
fore, as  under  the  military  ideals  of  the  Roman 
world,  it  sought  an  outlook  in  every  available  direc- 
tion, under  its  most  vigorous  and  most  potent  expres- 
sion, art  was  entirely  untrammelled  by  an  influence 
which  it  encounters  at  every  turn  in  the  modern 
world.  Probably  no  modern  mind,  Professor  Gard- 
ner has  recently  insisted,  can  fully  realise  the  part 
played  by  the  aesthetic  emotions  in  Greece,  or  the 
conditions  under  which  the  arts  were  exercised. 
"With  the  Greeks,"  to  use  this  writer's  words,  "it 
was  one  of  the  first  necessities  of  their  nature  to 
utter  in  some  visible  form,  in  monument  and  sculp- 
tured group,  their  strongest  emotions.  Their  sur- 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  191 

roundings  expressed  them  as  clearly  as  the  shell  of 
the  snail  indicates  its  species.  They  were  always,  so 
to  speak,  blossoming  in  works  of  art ;  they  thought 
and  felt  in  stone  or  marble,  or  in  the  great  national 
pictures  which  adorned  all  the  places  of  public 
resort."  1 

Now  as  in  the  light  of  the  modern  doctrine  of 
evolution  progress  has  been  made  towards  understand- 
ing the  origin  and  relations,  in  the  development  of 
the  race,  of  those  profound  aesthetic  feelings  and  emo- 
tions which,  as  Professor  Gardner  insists,  it  was  one 
of  the  first  necessities  of  the  Greek  nature  to  utter  in 
visible  form  in  the  creations  of  art,  a  significant  fact 
is  brought  into  prominence.  These  aesthetic  faculties, 
we  are  now  coming  to  perceive,  are  essentially  related 
in  their  origin  and  intensity  to  deep-lying  utilities  in 
the  past  history  of  the  race.  The  aesthetic  emotions 
with  which  we  are  concerned  in  Greek  art  have  their 
roots,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  experience  of  the  race  in 
that  long-drawn-out  first  epoch  of  social  evolution, 
when  the  present  was  always  in  the  ascendant ;  and 
when  every  human  force  and  activity  tended  to  reach 
its  highest  expression  in  terms  of  the  unrestrained  and 
dominant  present.2 

1  "  Greek  History  and  Greek  Monuments,"  by  Percy  Gardner,  Pro- 
fessor of  Classic   Archaeology,  Oxford    University,  Atlantic  Monthly, 
vol.  Ixxxiv. 

2  Compare,  for  instance,  Darwinism,  by  A.  R.  Wallace,  chap.  x.  ; 
Physiological  ^Esthetics,  by  Grant  Allen;   "Beauty    in  the  Eyes  of  an 
Evolutionist,"   Science  Journal,   1882  ;   "  Thoughts  upon  the  Musical 
Sense    in    Animals   and    Man,"    by   August    Weismann,    /Assays  upon 
Heredity,  voL    ii.    (Eng.  trs,  Poulton  and    Shipley);    Schopenhauer's 
Essay  on  the  Metaphysics  of  Fine  Art  (Eng.  trs.,  Saunders) ;   "  Natural- 
ism and  /Esthetics,"  part  i.  chap.  ii.  Balfour's  Foundations  of  Belief; 
with  Alison's  Essays  on  the  Nature  and  Principles  of  Taste. 


IQ2  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

As  we  regard  this  fact  attentively,  a  natural  princi- 
ple of  great  interest  emerges  into  view.  It  is,  that 
the  period  of  human  evolution  in  which  this  class  of 
aesthetic  feelings  and  emotions  must  tend  to  reach 
their  highest  expression  will  be,  therefore,  that  in 
which  the  epoch  of  the  ascendency  of  the  present  cul- 
minates. Nay,  further,  and  here  the  importance  of 
the  principle  impresses  the  mind,  it  would  seem  that 
in  the  second  epoch  in  which  the  present  begins  to 
pass  out  under  the  control  of  the  future,  and  while  as 
yet  another  and  higher  class  of  aesthetic  emotions  are 
nascent,  a  slowly  increasing  conflict  —  between  the  un- 
restrained expression  of  the  aesthetic  emotions  which 
are  related  in  their  fullest  intensity  to  the  experience 
of  the  race  in  the  first  epoch,  and  the  governing  prin- 
ciples of  the  era  in  which  the  present  is  passing  under 
the  control  of  the  future  —  will  develop  itself. 

There  may,  accordingly,  be  traced  throughout  every 
leading  phase  of  modern  Western  art  the  deepening 
shadow  of  this  conflict.  Its  influence  is  perceptible 
in  all  that  class  of  effort  expressing  itself  in  the  lit- 
erature of  the  emotions,  in  the  higher  forms  of  the 
drama,  and  in  most  of  the  controversies  which  are 
continually  being  waged  round  the  standards  of  taste 
in  the  plastic  and  pictoric  arts.  In  the  modern  world 
art  is,  in  short,  in  the  presence  of  an  influence  abso- 
lutely unknown  in  the  Greek  period ;  an  influence 
restraining,  and  at  the  same  time  upheaving,  which 
is  related  to  a  deep-lying  principle  of  social  evolution, 
and  which,  as  Tolstoy  has  correctly  perceived,  is  in 
the  last  analysis  ethical  in  character.1  "  Nowhere  in 

JCf.  What  is  Art?  by  Leo  Tolstoy,  trs.  from  the  Russian  by  Aylmer 
Maude.  Compare  also  Nietzsche's  The  Case  of  Wagner.  As  regards 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  193 

the  modern  world,"  says  Professor  Gardner,  "is  it 
harder  to  realise  the  conditions  of  Greek  art  than  in 
current  England  and  the  United  States."  A  recent 
art  critic  makes  practically  the  same  statement,  ex- 
tending it,  however,  to  the  Germanic  peoples  gener- 
ally, amongst  whom  it  is  stated  that  the  lucid  Greek 
and  Latin  spirit  has  now  come  into  permanent  con- 
flict with  a  quality  which  the  writer  endeavours  to 
describe  as  "a  haunting  sense  of  the  infinite."  1 

We  see,  in  short,  that  this  conflict  is  not  imaginary 
or  transient,  or  simply  racial  or  local,  as  it  is  some- 
times stated  to  be.  It  is  actual,  permanent,  and 
growing  ;  and  it  arises  directly  from  a  deep-seated 
principle  of  our  social  evolution  ;  —  from  the  fact,  that 
is  to  say,  that  in  an  epoch  in  which  the  ascendency 
of  the  present  is  being  slowly  overlaid  by  a  higher 
master-principle  of  the  evolutionary  process,  the 
aesthetic  feelings  and  emotions,  which  in  their  intens- 
est  expression  are  related  to  the  epoch  of  the  ascend- 
ency of  the  present,  are  no  longer  free  to  utter 
themselves  as  under  the  unrestrained  and  culminating 

the  drama  the  influence  of  the  conflict  may  be  traced  in  recent  English 
thought  in  Bernard  Shaw's  Essays  on  Ibsen  and  Wagner,  William 
Archer's  dramatic  criticisms,  and  the  writings  and  addresses  of  W.  L. 
Courtney,  H.  W.  Massingham,  and  many  other  writers.  See  also  in 
this  connection  Professor  Dowden's  "  Puritanism  and  English  Litera- 
ture," Contemporary  Review,  No.  403. 

1  This  is  but  another  method  of  expressing  the  conclusion  arrived  at 
in  the  foregoing  pages.  Where  amongst  the  Latin  peoples  of  to-day 
other  standards  prevail  in  art,  the  clue  is  to  be  sought,  the  same 
writer  remarks,  in  the  fact  that  the  Latin  methods  proceed  from  the 
deeply  rooted  belief  that  the  social  life  of  man,  i.e.  in  the  State,  is,  as 
in  the  ancient  civilisations,  the  end  of  the  greatest  consequence  to  men 
("  The  Superfluous  Critic,"  by  Aline  Gorren,  the  Century  Magazine, 
vol.  lv.). 

o 


194  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

conditions  in  which  Greek  art  flourished.  The  wide 
interval  which,  in  such  circumstances,  separates  the 
modern  world  from  the  conditions  which  governed 
the  expression  of  the  aesthetic  emotions  in  Greece, 
may  be  estimated  from  many  points  of  view.  Of  all 
the  master  minds  of  the  Greeks  that  of  Plato  was 
probably  most  influenced  by  those  ideas  of  the  infinite 
and  the  universal  destined  to  play  so  great  a  part  in 
the  subsequent  development  of  the  world.  Neverthe- 
less, when  we  see  Plato,  in  one  of  the  Dialogues,1 
attempting  to  interpret  conceptions  of  this  kind 
through  forms  of  aesthetic  expression  related  to  the 
unrestrained  standards  of  his  time,  the  result,  although 
producing  no  sense  of  the  unseemly  in  the  Greek 
mind,  is  to  us  so  inexpressible  that  the  real  meaning 
of  the  images  used  is  never  openly  discussed  in 
modern  literature.  In  the  epoch  of  Greek  art  it  was, 
in  short,  a  canon  in  keeping  with  every  fundamental 
principle  upon  which  society  was  constructed,  that  to 
the  artist  it  should  be  "one  of  the  first  necessities  of 
his  nature  to  utter  in  some  visible  form  his  strongest 
emotions."  It  was  the  natural  and  legitimate  effort, 
according  to  the  standards  of  the  time  in  every  other 
direction,  for  self-consciousness  thus  to  realise  itself 
unrestrained  in  its  highest  potency  in  art ;  and  solely 
for  its  own  sake  and  satisfaction.  The  standards  in 
art  were,  as  it  were,  but  the  highest  expression  in 
Greece  of  the  universal  standards  in  the  era  of  the 
ascendency  of  the  present ;  and  it  was,  in  the  condi- 
tions which  prevailed  in  the  Greek  world,  and  in  these 
alone,  that  the  aesthetic  emotions,  having  their  roots 
in  the  past  experience  of  the  race,  could  attain  their 

1  Phadrus. 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  195 

highest  results  and  reach  their  culminating  stage  of 
expression. 

It  was,  in  other  words,  the  same  causes  which 
rendered  the  Roman  empire  the  culminating  phase 
of  the  ideals  of  military  dominion,  that  gave  us  in  the 
Greek  world  the  culminating  phase  in  which  art,  for 
the  time  being,  attained  to  what  has  been  described 
as  almost  the  highest  limits  of  perfection.  In  each 
case  we  are  in  the  presence  of  the  controlling  princi- 
ple we  have  been  discussing  throughout.  Under  each 
form  we  have  but  reached  the  highest  point  of  that 
epoch  of  development  in  which  all  human  energies 
endeavour  to  find  their  most  unrestrained  and  force- 
ful expression  in  relation  to  existing  ends ;  of  that 
long  stage  of  human  evolution  in  which  the  ideals 
of  every  human  desire  included  in  the  ascendant 
present  tended  to  reach  some  form  of  culminating 
expression. 

It  is,  therefore,  as  we  have  seen,  this  principle  of 
the  ascendency  of  the  present  which  carries  the 
inquirer  into  the  inner  meaning  of  every  detail  of  the 
life  of  the  ancient  civilisations.  The  sacredness  of 
life  in  the  modern  State,  as  compared  with  the  an- 
cient world,  is  still  often  explained  as  if  it  were 
related  merely  to  different  and  more  efficient  stand- 
ards of  public  law  and  order.  But  we  see  that  there 
is  an  altogether  deeper  explanation  than  this.  In  a 
condition  of  civilisation  in  which  life  was  not  simply  of 
less  account,  but  in  which  the  lives  of  children  and 
of  slaves  were  at  the  absolute  disposal,  even  to  death, 
of  the  parent  or  master ;  in  which  the  absolute  rights 
the  head  of  the  family  were  such  as  were  included  in 
the  Roman  patria  fotestas,  and  those  of  the  husband 


196  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

such  as  the  Roman  manus  involved  ;  in  which  the 
exposure  of  children  and  infanticide  were  usual  prac- 
tices which  called  for  no  condemnation  ;  —  we  are  in 
the  presence  of  principles  which  mark  not  simply  a 
difference  of  degree,  but  one  of  kind  from  the  stand- 
ards of  the  civilisation  of  our  era.  What  has  to  be 
noted  is  the  complete  absence  of  that  assumption, 
deep,  potent,  and  all-pervading  in  its  effects,  which 
underlies  all  the  outward  standards  of  the  civilisation 
of  our  time  —  the  assumption  that,  in  the  last  resort, 
the  life  of  the  individual  is  related  to  ends  and  princi- 
ples which  entirely  transcend  the  objects  for  which 
the  political  organisation  around  us  itself  exists. 

The  same  difference  in  principle  underlies  all 
forms  and  institutions  which,  because  of  common 
names  or  outward  resemblances,  are  often  compared 
with  those  in  the  civilisation  of  our  era.  In  the  hard- 
fought  struggle  for  liberty  in  all  its  aspects,  which 
has  projected  itself  through  the  history  of  our  later 
civilisation,  liberty  is  often  spoken  of  as  if  it  were 
merely  related  to  the  principles  which  governed  the 
State  when  the  State,  as  in  the  ancient  civilisations, 
still  embraced  the  whole  life  of  the  individual.  But 
there  was  completely  absent  in  the  ancient  State 
that  distinctive  principle  which  has  been  the  prime 
force  behind  the  struggle  for  liberty  in  all  its  modern 
phases ;  namely,  the  assumption  that  the  principles 
to  which  individual  liberty,  as  individual  life,  is  ulti- 
mately related,  transcend  all  the  purposes  of  the 
existing  political  State.  It  is  the  same  as  to  the  phe- 
nomenon of  Democracy.  The  comparisons  which 
Grote  instituted  between  ancient  and  modern  Democ- 
racy—  the  ideas  involved  in  which  may  be  traced 


VI  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE  PRESENT  197 

through  the  phase  of  thought  represented  in  the 
modern  utilitarian  movement — are  entirely  super- 
ficial.1 It  is  not  simply  that  Democracy  in  the 
ancient  world  rested  on  slavery.  The  difference  goes 
far  deeper  than  this.  That  deep-lying  assumption, 
which  may  be  distinguished  beneath  the  surface  in 
all  the  crises  of  political  life  in  the  modern  world, 
and  which,  in  that  world,  has  slowly  undermined  the 
foundations  of  an  earlier  order  of  society  —  namely,  the 
assumption  that  in  the  last  resort  we  have  a  duty,  not 
only  to  our  fellow-creatures,  but  to  principles  which 
transcend  all  the  purposes  for  which  our  own  lives 
and  the  life  of  the  political  State  exists  —  was  un- 
known in  the  ancient  world.  No  sense  of  responsi- 
bility to  principles  transcending  the  meaning  of  the 

1  The  distinct  feature  of  these  studies  is  the  absence  of  any  really 
scientific  perception  of  the  meaning  in  human  evolution  of  the  interval 
which  divides  the  modern  conception  of  the  State — with  those  stand- 
ards of  conduct  and  duty  in  the  individual  upon  which  that  concep- 
tion rests  —  from  the  ideal  of  the  State  in  the  ancient  world.  Austin 
in  England,  in  the  special  department  of  jurisprudence,  applied  the 
principles  to  which  Bentham  had  sought  to  give  more  general  effect. 
"  Plato,"  said  D.  C.  Heron,  writing  about  the  time  of  Austin's  death, 
and  at  the  period  of  the  ascendency  of  the  utilitarian  theories  of  society 
in  England  {History  of  Jurisprudence,  1 860),  "considered  that  all 
human  duties  came  within  the  province  and  control  of  public  authority 
.  .  .  assuredly  in  our  present  imperfect  state  of  knowledge  and  develop- 
ment we  cannot  say  with  certainty  that  a  time  may  not  come  when,  in 
accordance  with  the  theory  of  Plato,  all  the  virtues  may  be  so  enforced." 
This  confusion  still  widely  prevails.  It  is,  for  instance,  impossible  at  the 
present  time  to  take  up  any  considerable  study  in  the  current  political 
literature  of  Western  Europe  or  America  without  becoming  aware  that 
there  are  in  progress  in  our  midst  political  movements,  enlisting  in  their 
activities  much  earnest  endeavour  and  thought,  in  which  the  argument 
and  discussion  still  proceeds,  in  the  last  resort,  upon  the  assumption 
that  the  accepted  conception  of  the  modern  State  is  the  same  as  that 
which  prevailed  in  the  ancient  world. 


198  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

State  had  as  yet  projected  the  controlling  aims  of 
human  consciousness  out  of  the  ascendant  present. 

This  is  the  meaning  of  the  ancient  world.  When 
all  the  details  of  the  life  of  these  civilisations  are  seen 
in  their  relation  to  the  larger  process  of  human  evolu- 
tion, the  culminating  effect,  focussed  through  many 
mediums,  is  so  unmistakable  as  to  bring  to  the  mind 
a  sense  of  irresistible  conviction  as  to  their  essential 
meaning.  Looking  back  over  the  history  of  Greece 
and  Rome,  we  may  see  that  the  characteristic  fea- 
tures are  related  to  a  ruling  principle  the  operation 
of  which  has  woven  a  gigantic  pattern  through  an 
immense  period  of  human  evolution ;  a  pattern  in 
which  the  life  and  history  of  these  civilisations  are 
themselves  no  more  than  local  details.  We  see  the 
history  of  these  States  now,  not  as  some  wonderful 
and  mysterious  page  in  the  development  of  humanity 
that  must  be  studied  with  a  kind  of  awe  apart  by 
itself;  but  rather  as  the  culminating  phase  of  that 
epoch  of  human  development  in  which  the  ruling  end 
that  is  being  attained  is  the  subordination  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  existing  society ;  and  in  which  the  later 
governing  principle  by  which  existing  society  is  itself 
destined  to  be  subordinated  to  a  meaning  projected 
beyond  the  content  of  its  political  consciousness  has 
not  yet  begun  to  operate. 

It  is  the  last  stage  of  that  epoch  in  which  the  con- 
tent of  human  consciousness  is  as  yet  bounded  by  the 
horizon  of  the  existing  political  organisation  ;  of  that 
epoch  in  which  the  State,  therefore,  claims  the  entire 
rights,  duties,  and  life  of  the  individual ;  of  that 
epoch  in  which  the  whole  tendency  of  human  devel- 
opment is,  therefore,  caught  in  the  sweep  of  a  vast 


vi  ASCENDENCY  OF  THE   PRESENT  199 

process,  in  which  the  present  is  in  the  ascendant,  and 
in  which  every  impulse  of  the  human  will,  and  every 
form  of  human  energy  tends,  therefore,  to  reach  its 
highest  potentiality  in  relation  to  desires  expressing 
themselves  in  the  omnipotent  present.  It  is  the  cul- 
minating phase  of  that  great  epoch  in  the  history 
of  the  race,  in  which  all  its  religions  are  as  yet  pri- 
marily related  to  material  ends ;  in  which  society  has 
not  as  yet  passed  under  the  control  of  a  meaning  infi- 
nite in  the  future ;  in  which,  therefore,  humanity 
itself,  however  efficient  its  purposes,  however  splen- 
did its  achievements,  however  transforming  its  genius, 
is  yet,  as  it  were,  without  a  soul. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  PASSING  OF  THE  PRESENT  UNDER  THE  CONTROL 
OF  THE  FUTURE 

IN  that  epoch  of  social  evolution  which  begins  in 
Western  civilisation  with  the  gradual  break-up  of  the 
political  fabric  of  the  Roman  empire,  we  have  devel- 
oped from  the  outset  upon  the  stage  of  the  world  the 
terms  of  a  profound  antinomy.  Nothing  like  it  has 
before  been  presented  in  the  evolutionary  process  in 
life  ;  and  it  is  only  slowly,  and  as  the  mind  is  able  to 
take  in  the  full  reach  of  the  principles  involved,  that 
the  significance  of  the  struggle  between  the  forces 
representing  the  two  opposing  terms  therein  is 
realised. 

Almost  the  first  conclusion  which  takes  definite 
shape  in  the  mind,  after  prolonged  study  of  the 
development  in  history  which  opens  with  the  rise 
into  ascendency  of  the  principles  of  the  system  of  re- 
ligious belief  associated  with  the  era  in  which  we  are 
living,  is  that  it  is  impossible  to  form  any  true  con- 
ception, either  of  the  reach  or  of  the  import  of  the 
process  unfolding  itself  in  our  Western  world,  from 
observation  of  it  in  the  midst  of  the  events  to  which 
it  at  any  period  gives  rise.  The  meaning  of  the 
development  in  progress  so  evidently  transcends  the 
limits  of  every  form  and  of  every  institution  within 
which  its  exponents  endeavour,  for  the  time  being,  to 
confine  it ;  the  inherent  impetus  is  so  much  greater 

200 


CHAP,  vii          THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  2OI 

than  that  which  appears  to  be  behind  the  events  of 
the  centuries  which  at  any  point  spread  themselves 
before  the  immediate  view  of  the  historian ;  the  mean 
life-centre  of  the  process  as  a  whole  is,  from  the 
beginning,  as  it  still  continues  to  be,  so  immeasurably 
remote  in  the  future;  —  that  it  is  only  when  the 
mind  is,  by  an  effort,  withdrawn  to  a  considerable 
distance  that  we  are  able  to  hold  clearly  in  view  that 
governing  principle  of  the  movement  with  which  sci- 
ence is,  over  and  above  everything  else,  concerned. 

When  the  observer,  from  such  a  standpoint,  looks 
along  the  centuries  of  our  era  in  Western  history  he 
appears,  at  first  sight,  to  have  in  view  the  working  of 
the  same  principles  of  history  that  ruled  in  the  epoch 
through  which  the  world  has  passed.  It  is  to  all 
outward  appearance  the  same  changing  conflict  of 
peoples ;  the  same  rise  and  fall  of  nationalities ;  and 
ever,  beneath  the  surface  of  all  the  events  of  history, 
the  same  rule  of  force  as  in  the  past.  Nevertheless, 
the  future  is  no  longer  destined  to  resemble  the  past. 
The  controlling  meaning  of  the  social  process  in 
human  history  has  been  changed.  The  opposing 
terms  in  that  process  in  the  past  have  been  the 
interests  of  the  existing  individual  and  the  interests 
of  existing  society.  In  the  phase  of  evolution  with 
which  we  are  about  to  be  concerned  in  the  future,  a 
new  antinomy  has  been  opened  in  history.  All  the 
interests  of  the  existing  individuals,  all  the  interests 
of  the  existing  political  organisation,  are  now  about 
to  constitute  but  a  single  term  in  a  new  antithesis. 
The  interests  of  "society,"  as  society  has  hitherto 
been  conceived,  are  now  themselves  about  to  be  sub- 
ordinated to  the  ends  of  a  social  process,  the  meaning 


202  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

of  which  can  never  more   be   included   within   the 
bounds  of  political  consciousness. 

The  great  drama  upon  which  the  curtain  begins  to 
rise  in  Western  history  is,  in  short,  one  which,  by  in- 
herent necessity,  must  gradually  envelop  in  its  influ- 
ence all  the  activities  of  society  and  of  the  human 
mind.  For,  as  we  have  seen,  the  enormously  pro- 
longed conflict  in  which  the  individual  has  passed 
under  the  control  of  the  existing  social  organisation 
—  a  conflict  out  of  which  has  arisen  all  the  phenom- 
ena of  law  and  of  government  in  the  past,  and  out 
of  which  still  proceeds  some  of  the  profoundest  emo- 
tions with  which  the  highest  literature  and  the  high- 
est art  continue  to  be  occupied  —  can  furnish  no 
more  than  a  feeble  anticipation  of  the  phenomena 
which  must  accompany  the  passing  of  society  itself 
under  the  control  of  interests  projected  beyond  the 
furthest  limits  of  its  political  consciousness.  Into 
the  cosmic  sweep  of  such  a  process  all  the  activities 
of  the  race  in  history  must  in  time  be  drawn.  It  is  a 
process,  the  duration  of  which  must  extend  beyond 
the  furthest  reach  of  the  imagination.  The  entire 
period  of  Western  civilisation  so  far  included  in  our 
era,  furnishes,  as  has  been  already  stated,  hardly 
more  than  room  for  the  bare  outlines  of  the  main 
features  of  the  problem  which  it  involves  to  become 
visible  in  history. 

When  the  imagination  of  the  evolutionist  is 
allowed  to  dwell  on  the  features  of  that  phase  of 
history  which  opens  before  him  in  the  first  centuries 
of  our  era,  he  must  gradually  realise  to  what  an 
unusual  degree  the  elements  of  scientific  interest 
have  been  accumulated  in  the  period.  He  is  stand- 


vii  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  203 

ing,  as  it  were,  in  history,  watching  the  last  waves  of 
the  military  migrations,  that  so  long  flowed  westward 
over  Europe,  coming  slowly  to  rest.  They  are  the 
waves  of  that  process  which  have  flowed  strongest 
and  farthest ;  and  which  represent  the  peoples 
amongst  whom  the  process  of  military  selection 
has  been  most  searching  and  most  prolonged.  He 
has  in  sight,  as  it  were,  the  races  in  whom  the  tide 
of  military  conquest  has  reached  its  flood,  and  to 
whom  the  future  of  the  world  is  now  about  to  pass  ; 
the  races  who,  for  a  period  immense  and  indefinitely 
prolonged  in  the  future,  are  about  to  provide  and 
keep  clear  in  the  world  the  stage  upon  which  a  new 
epoch  of  evolution  is  destined  to  open.  And  it  is 
into  the  great  matrix  provided  in  history  by  the  still 
standing  political  fabric  of  that  empire,  in  which  the 
ideal  of  military  conquest  has  once  and  for  ever  cul- 
minated, that  he  sees  these  races,  the  latest  and  still 
virgin  product  of  a  world-process  of  military  selec- 
tion, coming  to  rest  at  last  to  receive  the  impress 
upon  them  of  the  forces  about  to  be  unloosed  in  the 
world. 

In  the  world  of  history  into  which  these  races  were 
thus  ushered,  on  their  contact  alike  with  the  political 
forms  of  the  Roman  empire  and  with  the  products  of 
Greek  culture,  a  single  governing  principle  had 
hitherto  held  all  others  in  subjection.  It  was  the 
world  of  the  ascendant  present.  It  was  the  world  in 
which  the  ultimate  meaning  that  every  human  insti- 
tution yielded  on  analysis  was,  that,  as  there  was 
nothing  more  important  than  the  present,  so  there 
was  nothing  higher  than  the  forces  which  ruled  the 
present.  It  was  the  world  where  every  form  of 


204  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

human  distinction  and  every  essential  of  honour  had 
hitherto  rested  on  force;  where  a  rule  of  force  had 
made  all  labour  degrading ;  where  idleness  was  the 
sister  of  freedom  ;  and  where  the  social,  the  eco- 
nomic, and  even  the  intellectual  life  had  rested  on  a 
basis  of  slavery.  It  was  the  world  in  which  the  spirit 
of  aristocracy  resting  ultimately  on  force,  had  breathed 
through  every  work  of  the  political  genius  of  the 
most  gifted  people  the  race  had  produced.  It  was  a 
world  in  which  a  rule  of  force  had  culminated  at  last 
in  the  most  colossal  and  ruthless  expression  of  unre- 
strained force  it  was  possible  to  reach  —  an  empire 
of  universal  conquest  in  which  the  chief  and  symbol 
of  omnipotent  military  force  had  come  at  last  to  re- 
ceive divine  honours  and  to  be  worshipped  as  a  god. 

The  omnipotence  of  the  present  was,  therefore, 
written  over  all  things.  It  was  the  present  that  had 
lived  in  Greek  art.  It  was  the  present  that  had 
reasoned  in  Greek  philosophy.  It  was  the  ruling 
present  which  had  made  virtue  and  enlightened 
pleasure  synonymous  for  the  individual,  which  had 
made  virtue  and  enlightened  self-interest  synony- 
mous in  the  State.  It  was  the  present  which,  con- 
ceiving, in  the  words  of  one  of  the  noblest  of  the 
Romans,  that  every  man's  life  lies  all  within  it,1 
had  found  the  highest  expression  for  virtue  in  the 
egoisms  of  Roman  Stoicism.  It  was  the  present 
which,  conceiving  the  existing  world  entirely  occu- 
pied with  its  own  affairs,2  had  found  intellectual 
shelter  for  its  vices  under  the  name  of  Epicurus. 
It  was  the  forceful,  passionate,  dominating  present 

1  Marcus  Aurelius,  Meditations,  iii.  x. 

2  Cf.  Cicero,  De  Nat.  Dear.,  i.  44. 


vii  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  20$ 

which  lived  alike  in  Attic  marble,  in  Greek  song,  and 
in  the  nameless  institutions  of  Roman  sensuality.  It 
was  the  rule  of  the  present  which  drove  the  greatest 
idealist  of  the  Greeks  to  render  his  conceptions  of 
truth  and  justice  in  their  essences  in  the  inexpres- 
sible imagery  of  the  PJuzdrus.  It  was  the  present 
which,  knowing  no  right  or  duty  to  anything  higher 
in  life  than  itself,  had  held  the  world  in  the  spirit  of 
the  Roman  ins  civile;  of  which  the  expression  in 
the  individual  was  the  rights  of  the  patria  potestas; 
of  which  the  culminating  expression  in  the  State  was 
the  empire  of  universal  military  conquest ;  of  which 
the  all-pervading  expression  in  society  was  the  insti- 
tution of  slavery  in  that  form  in  which,  to  extend  the 
description  of  Wallon,  the  central  figure  was  a  being 
possessing  all  the  attraction  of  a  man,  and  yet  a  hu- 
man being  to  whom  society  stood  absolved  from  every 
moral  obligation  of  humanity,  a  being  in  whom  and 
to  whom  all  the  wildest  excesses,  all  the  deepest  deg- 
radations, were  lawful,  provided  they  were  commanded 
by  a  master. 

It  was,  in  short,  the  world  in  which  was  repre- 
sented the  culminating  age  of  that  long  epoch  of 
human  development  in  which  the  significance  that 
underlay  every  human  institution,  in  the  last  analysis, 
was  the  conception  that  there  were  no  rights  and  no 
responsibilities  in  man,  no  meaning  and  no  signifi- 
cance in  life,  no  hopes  and  no  desires  in  the  world, 
save  such  as  were  related  to  present  ends.  All  the 
wants,  the  desires,  the  passions,  the  ambitions  of 
men,  were  correlated  with  the  things  which  men  saw 
around  them.  It  was  the  world  in  which  all  the 
theories  of  the  State,  all  the  ideals  of  art,  all  the 


206  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

principles  of  conduct,  all  the  conceptions  of  religion, 
centred  round  the  things  which  men  hungered  and 
thirsted  for  in  that  material  and  omnipotent  present 
in  which  they  lived. 

It  was  in  such  a  world  and  in  such  an  environment 
that  the  evolutionist  sees  now  projected  into  the 
minds  of  men  an  ideal,  developed  among  an  insignifi- 
cant non-military  people  in  an  eastern  province  of  the 
Roman  empire,  involving  the  absolute  negation  of 
the  ruling  principle  which  had  thus  moved  and  shaped 
the  development  of  the  world  in  every  leading  detail 
of  the  past.  The  mind  has  to  be  able  to  state  to 
itself  in  terms  of  modern  Darwinian  principles,  the 
nature  of  the  world-process  at  work  in  human  history, 
to  realise  the  full  significance  of  the  transition  which 
the  acceptance  of  this  ideal  involved  in  the  epoch  of 
evolution  which  now  opens. 

There  is  no  more  imposing  spectacle  disclosed  in 
the  research  into  human  origins,  when  we  perceive 
the  nature  of  the  evolutionary  process  in  history, 
than  the  growing  definition  in  the  human  mind  of 
the  concepts  by  which  the  controlling  consciousness 
of  the  race  becomes  destined  to  be  projected  at  last 
beyond  the  content  of  all  interests  in  the  present ; 
and  by  which  that  consciousness  becomes  related  at 
last,  in  a  sense  of  personal,  direct,  and  compelling 
responsibility,  to  principles  which  transcend  the 
meaning  of  the  individual,  the  present,  the  State,  and 
the  whole  visible  world  as  it  exists. 

Far  back  in  the  religious  systems  of  early  Egypt, 
while  as  yet  the  military  process  that  was  in  time  to 
envelop  the  northern  world  in  its  influence  had  not 
begun  to  leave  its  record  in  history,  we  see  being 


vn        THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE      207 

developed,  amongst  an  agricultural  people,  who  had 
already  carried  the  arts  of  life  to  a  high  state  of  cul- 
tivation, the  first  outlines  of  the  concept  of  mono- 
theism. It  is  everywhere  deeply  overlaid  in  the 
general  mind  by  those  crude  and  gross  concepts  of 
the  present  and  the  material  that  are  peculiar  to  the 
first  stage  of  human  evolution  ;  and  it  is  only  through 
the  expositions  of  the  higher  minds  that  we  catch 
sight  at  times,  beneath  this  overgrowth,  of  the  expres- 
sion of  the  first  contact  of  the  human  mind  with  that 
ascending  process  into  which  the  sum  of  human 
activities  is  destined  in  time  to  be  drawn. 

With  progress  ever  continuing  in  the  same  direc- 
tion, through  the  vicissitudes  of  peoples  and  races, 
we  see  the  concept  taking  shape,  and  the  expression 
of  it  growing  clearer  in  the  religious  systems  of  the 
Eastern  peoples  who  have  come  under  its  influence. 
Throughout  a  prolonged,  period,  moreover,  in  which 
the  record  of  the  growth  and  purification  of  this  con- 
cept is  presented  in  the  history  of  the  Jewish  people, 
we  have  clearly  in  sight  a  phenomenon  of  the  first  sci- 
entific interest ;  namely,  the  development  of  an  utterly 
opposing  principle  to  that  full,  vigorous,  and  intense 
expression  of  the  ascendency  and  efficiency  of  life,  in 
all  its  uninterrupted  play  in  the  present,  which  was  to 
reach  its  climax  in  the  Greek  ethos.  We  see  the 
Hebrew  spirit,  in  some  of  the  finest  passages  in  the 
literature  of  the  race,  rising  in  superior  and  eloquent 
scorn  to  all  the  works  of  an  existing  world  resting  on 
force.  In  the  vision  of  universal  justice  which  haunts 
the  consciousness  of  the  Jewish  people  throughout  its 
history  it  is  the  poor,  the  oppressed,  the  fallen,  the 
weak,  the  disinherited,  that  become  all  that  the  gifted, 


2O8  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  noble,  the  darling  aristocrat  of  strength  and  per- 
fection in  the  present  are  to  the  Greek.  We  follow 
the  development  of  this  conception  in  Jewish  history 
till  it  grows  greater  than  the  nation,  greater  than  all 
its  present,  greater  than  the  race  itself;  till  associated 
at  last  with  an  ideal  of  self-subordination  and  self- 
abnegation  which  has  burst  all  the  bounds  of  the 
present  and  the  material,  while  it  has  become  touched 
with  the  profoundest  quality  of  human  emotion,  it 
goes  forth  in  the  first  century  of  our  era  to  subdue 
that  world  in  which  the  principle  of  the  ascendency 
of  the  present  has  reached  its  culminating  form  of 
expression ;  to  conquer  the  peoples  able  alone  to  pro- 
vide for  it  a  milieu  in  history  —  the  peoples  amongst 
whom  a  process  of  military  selection,  probably  the 
most  searching,  strenuous,  and  prolonged  that  the 
race  has  undergone,  has  reached  its  climax.1 

As  the  observer  recalls  at  this  point  the  principle 
of  development  which  came  into  view  in  an  earlier 
chapter  —  namely,  that  no  progress  could  be  made 
towards  that  second  and  higher  stage  of  social  evolu- 
tion, in  which  the  future  begins  to  control  the  present, 
until  natural  selection  had  first  of  all  developed  a  peo- 
ple or  a  type  of  society  able  to  hold  the  world  against 
all  comers  in  the  present  —  the  significance  of  the 
conditions  into  which  the  new  ideal  has  been  pro- 

1  How  to  reconcile  the  two  opposing  and  seemingly  irreconcilable 
tendencies  summed  up  in  the  words  Hebraism  and  Hellenism  is,  says 
Professor  Butcher  with  insight,  the  problem  of  modern  civilisation  :  — 
how  to  unite  the  Hebrew  ideal,  in  which  the  controlling  meaning,  to 
which  human  consciousness  is  related,  is  projected  out  of  the  present, 
"  with  the  Hellenic  conception  of  human  energies,  manifold  and  ex- 
pansive, each  of  which  claims  for  itself  uninterrupted  play  "  (cf.  Some 
Aspects  of  Greek  Genius,  by  S.  H.  Butcher,  p.  45). 


VH  THE   PRESENT  AND  THE   FUTURE  2OQ 

jected  begins  to  hold  the  imagination.  For  we  see 
how  far  removed  from  each  other  are  the  terms  of  the 
antinomy.  The  peoples  upon  whom  has  devolved  this 
new  destiny  in  history  are,  of  necessity,  not  allied  to, 
but  alien  to  the  spirit  of  the  new  ideal.  They  are  in 
the  nature  of  things  the  very  pagans  of  the  pagan 
world.1  We  have  disclosed  to  view,  that  is  to  say,  the 
terms  of  an  evolutionary  problem  of  the  first  order, 
evidently  destined  to  become  related  to  an  immense 
sequence  of  phenomena  in  the  future  —  a  problem  of 
such  a  character  that  thousands  of  years  must  obvi- 
ously elapse  before  its  full  outlines  and  magnitude  can 
become  disclosed  on  the  stage  of  history.2 

1  It  is  necessary  to  always  keep  clearly  before  the  mind  a  permanent 
fact,  the  import  of  which  still  underlies  the  meaning  of  Western  history, 
namely,  that  the  peoples  among  whom  the  development  in  progress  in 
our  civilisation  is  taking  place  represent  by  descent  the  great  pagan 
stock  of  the  world;  the  stock,  that  is  to  say,  amongst  whom  the  pagan 
spirit  reached  its  fullest  development  and  produced  its  most  character- 
istic  results.     Compare   in   this   connection  "  Race   and   Religion   in 
India,"  by  A.  M.  Fairbairn,  Contemporary  Review,  No.  404;  and  "The 
Influence  of  Europe  on  Asia,"  by  M.  Townsend,  op.  fit.  No.  422. 

2  Throughout  a  long  period  in  the  past,  during  which  the  life  and 
literature  of  Greece  and  Rome  have  been  made  the  subject  of  close 
study  by  Western  scholars,  we  may  distinguish  on  the  whole  a  certain 
consciousness  of  the  contrast  between  the  remarkable  results  produced 
by  these  civilisations  in  almost  every  department  of  human  activity  — 
and  in  particular  between  the  general  range  and  depth  of  the  products 
of  the  Greek  intellect  —  and  the  crudeness  and  grossness  of  the  prac- 
tical ideal  which  appear  to  be  represented  in  the  religious  systems  of 
the  two  peoples.     If  the  mind  has  remained  fully  open  to  the  effect,  a 
comparison  between  the  general  ideas  and  conceptions  expressed  in  the 
religious  systems  of  Greece  and  Rome,  and  those  which  had  already 
begun  to  so  profoundly  influence  the  human  mind  in  other  religious 
systems  of  the  Eastern  world,  makes  a  marked  impression  on  th«  ob- 
server.    The  clue  to  the  contrast  lies,  however,  as  will  be  perceived,  in 
the  fact,  upon  which  emphasis  has  been  laid  in  the  preceding  chapters, 

p 


2IO  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

As  the  evolutionist,  therefore,  at  the  present  day 
turns  over  the  literature  of  the  first  centuries  of  our 
era,  and  follows,  in  the  outward  record  of  events 
therein,  the  contact  of  this  ideal  with  every  existing 
phase  of  human  activity ;  it  must  be,  if  he  has  been 
able  to  retain  his  position  of  detachment  from  all  cur- 
rent theories  and  prepossessions,  with  a  clear  and 
definite  impression  growing  in  his  mind.  Sooner  or 
later  the  conviction  must  take  possession  of  him,  that 
there  must  be  underlying  the  phenomena  he  is  regard- 
ing a  meaning,  in  relation  to  the  central  problem  of 
human  evolution,  which  is  altogether  larger  than  any 
he  is  able  to  find  expressed  in  the  departments  of 
knowledge  which  have  dealt  with  these  phenomena  in 
the  past. 

As  he  follows  the  movement  itself  in  the  inner  his- 
tory of  it  presented  in  that  most  remarkable  record  of 
the  human  mind,  the  writings  of  the  early  Fathers  of 
the  Church  ;  as  he  then  turns  outwards  and  notes  the 
contact  of  the  movement  with  the  Roman,  the  Greek, 
and  the  Alexandrian  tendencies  in  the  philosophy  of 
the  ancient  world,  its  contact  with  the  mind  of  the 
northern  military  races,  with  the  public  opinion  of  the 
Roman  world,  and,  last  of  all,  with  the  political  in- 
stitutions of  the  Roman  empire ;  and  as  he  then 
turns  once  more  and  closely  regards  the  move- 
ment itself,  with  the  schisms,  the  conflicts,  the  devel- 
opments which  crowd  around  the  low  level  from  which 
it  rises  in  history,  and  which  almost  serve  to  conceal 
from  view  the  integrating  process  of  life  which  is 

namely,  the  relationship  of  the  religious  systems  of  Greece  and  Rome 
to  the  governing  principle  of  that  prolonged  epoch  of  military  selection 
which  had  culminated  amongst  the  Western  races. 


vii  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  211 

slowly  rising  through  them  all,  —  one  central  idea  will 
in  all  probability  have  taken  possession  of  his  mind. 
We  are  watching  beneath  it  all  —  he  must  feel  con- 
vinced—  a  development  of  the  first  importance  in  the 
evolution  of  life.  Whatever  the  shape  the  movement 
may  have  taken  for  the  time  being,  whatever  the  de- 
velopments it  may  be  destined  to  undergo  in  the 
future,  of  a  central  fact  underlying  it  as  a  whole  there 
can  be  absolutely  no  doubt.  An  evolutionary  princi- 
ple of  entirely  new  significance  has  begun  to  operate 
in  society. 

The  time  has  gone  by  in  our  day  when  we  can 
imagine  that  in  discussing  in  the  name  of  science  the 
meaning  of  the  displays  of  ignorance  and  credulity, 
or  of  the  savage  paroxysms  of  human  passions  which 
have  from  time  to  time  found  expression  throughout 
this  movement,  we  are  discussing  the  meaning  of 
the  movement  itself.  Beneath  all  these  things  we 
are  concerned  with  a  vast  process  of  development, 
rising  slowly  through  the  centuries,  the  life-centre  of 
which  is  still  immeasurably  remote  in  the  future. 
The  time  has  come  when  this  phenomenon  must  be 
discussed  in  the  same  spirit  of  austere  devotion  to 
the  truth,  and  therefore  in  that  same  attitude  of 
passionless  indifference  to  all  preconceived  opinions 
and  beliefs  whatever,  which  has  now  come  to  be 
the  ideal,  if  not  the  characteristic,  of  the  higher 
work  of  science  in  every  other  department  of  know- 
ledge. 

Now  we  can  never  understand  the  real  signifi- 
cance of  the  development,  which  begins  in  Western 
history  with  the  rise  into  ascendency  of  the  influence 
of  the  new  system  of  religious  belief,  until  we  get 


212  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

to  the  heart  of  a  curious  intellectual  phenomenon  of 
the  ancient  world.  If  we  ask  ourselves  what  was 
the  ultimate  meaning  which  the  ancient  philosophy 
was  trying  to  express  at  the  point  in  history  in 
which  it  comes  into  contact  with  the  new  move- 
ment, the  reply  which  we  receive  is  of  great  interest. 
If  we  look  round  us  at  the  present  day  at  the  litera- 
ture of  current  thought,  it  may  be  noticed  that  there 
is  sometimes  expressed  in  it  the  views  of  a  class  of 
writers  who,  perplexed  with  the  modern  outlook, 
carry  the  mind  back  with  a  kind  of  half-formed  long- 
ing to  the  days  of  that  humanitarian  philosophy 
which  influenced  some  of  the  best  minds  in  the  first 
centuries  of  the  Roman  empire.  The  lofty  moral 
earnestness  of  Seneca  and  Epictetus,  the  noble  dis- 
ciplined humanity  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  even  nowadays 
makes  so  distinct  an  impression  on  the  mind  that 
there  are  some  who  are  inclined  to  regard  the  inter- 
vening period  of  history  as  a  kind  of  retrogression. 
What  they  seem  almost  to  think  is  that  if  the  world 
had  only  been  allowed  to  develop  the  inheritance 
won  for  the  race  by  the  intellect  of  Greece  and  the 
political  genius  of  Rome,  it  might  have  ripened  down 
to  the  present  time,  in  view  of  a  broader  humanita- 
rian ideal ;  and  with  an  outlook  which  would  have 
equalled  if  not  surpassed  in  promise  that  which  the 
most  optimistic  minds  amongst  us  are  now  able  to 
look  forward  to. 

In  support  of  this  view  much  plausible  reasoning 
is  often  adduced.  Nevertheless  it  represents  a  con- 
ception entirely  superficial.  It  involves  a  misunder- 
standing not  only  of  the  distinctive  principle  which 
is  shaping  the  development  of  the  modern  world, 


VU        THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE      213 

but  of  the  very  life-principle  of  the  ancient  world 
itself. 

On  more  than  one  occasion  in  his  life  Freeman 
referred  with  great  emphasis  to  a  crisis  in  the  de- 
velopment of  his  view  of  ancient  history  which  had 
evidently  left  a  deep  impression  on  his  mind.  In 
his  Oxford  lectures  for  the  year  1884-85,  the  sub- 
ject was  referred  to  with  much  earnestness.  He 
well  remembered,  he  said,  how  startled  he  was  when 
he  first  realised,  through  the  teaching  of  Finlay, 
"that  the  age  which  we  commonly  look  on  as  the 
most  glorious  in  Grecian  history,  the  fifth  century 
before  Christ,  was  in  truth  an  age  of  Greek  decline."  J 
The  Greek  mind  was  yet  to  produce  much  of  its  high- 
est work  —  the  wider  outlook  in  thought,  and  that 
more  humanitarian  tendency  in  philosophy  which  was 
afterwards  to  reach  its  loftiest  expression  in  Roman 
Stoicism  and  in  the  later  developments  of  Roman 
jurisprudence,  were  almost  entirely  the  products  of  a 
subsequent  period.  And  yet — to  use  Freeman's 
words  of  the  period  —  "  the  Greece  of  the  fifth  cen- 
tury before  Christ  is  like  the  Rome  of  the  fourth 
century  after  Christ.2  What  we  sometimes  fail  to 
see  of  it  Herodotus  saw  clearly  .  .  .  for  the  Greek 
people  as  a  whole  all  over  the  world  it  was  an  age 
of  decline."3 

It  may  seem  to  many  to  be  curious  that  the  per- 
ception of  a  fact  which  often  makes  so  little  mark 
on  the  mind,  even  when  it  is  fully  recognised,  should 
have  so  deeply  impressed  Freeman.  We  have  to 

1  Chief  Pfrioi/s  of  European  History,  by  E.  A.  Freeman,  p.  21. 
*  Ibid.  p.  22.  *  Ibid.  p.  21. 


214  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

turn    elsewhere   to   perceive   the  direction  in  which 
the  larger  meaning  which  is  behind  it  carries  us. 

It  must  be  within  the  experience  of  more  than 
one  student  of  the  history  of  Roman  law,  that  there 
has  happened  in  the  development  of  his  view  of 
Roman  jurisprudence  a  crisis  which  will  at  once 
suggest  a  remarkable  relation  to  the  experience  of 
Freeman  in  Greek  history  here  related.  There  is 
hardly  any  more  striking  spectacle  in  Roman  history 
than  the  gradual  growth  and  expansion  of  legal  con- 
ception within  the  empire,  as  the  Romans  were 
brought  into  ever  extending  political  and  commercial 
relations  with  the  wider  world  they  had  conquered. 
We  see  the  haughty  civis  of  the  third  century  B.C. 
wrapt  in  the  rights,  the  privileges,  and  the  protec- 
tion of  the  original  local  law  of  the  city  of  Rome, 
shutting  the  door  of  the  ius  civile  in  the  face  of  the 
world,  and  excluding  the  peoples  he  had  conquered 
from  the  coveted  privileges  of  the  Roman  civitas. 
We  watch  Rome  meanwhile  gradually  becoming  the 
political  and  commercial  capital  of  the  world,  and  see 
the  growth  outside  of  the  ius  civile,  within  which  the 
citizen  has  entrenched  himself,  of  the  ins  gentium  or 
the  body  of  laws  of  the  excluded  aliens.  We  follow 
the  gradually  transforming  influence  of  the  concep- 
tions of  the  latter  upon  those  of  the  former;  and  the 
slow  yielding  of  the  ideals  of  exclusive  citizenship 
under  the  pressure  of  cosmopolitan  necessity  on  the 
one  hand,  under  the  influence  of  Hellenic  culture  on 
the  other.  We  see  the  principles,  the  phraseology, 
and  the  humanitarian  conceptions  of  Stoicism  being 
gradually  incorporated  in  the  system  of  Roman  public 
law  ;  while  pari  passu  there  is  in  progress  the  grad- 


vn        THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE      215 

ual  extension  of  the  rights  of  citizenship ;  until  Cara- 
calla,  in  the  third  century,  confers  the  civitas  on  all 
Roman  subjects  who  are  members  of  some  political 
community ;  until  Justinian  at  last,  in  the  sixth  cen- 
tury, in  constituting  every  free  subject  of  the  Roman 
empire  as  such  a  full  Roman  citizen,  sweeps  away 
the  entire  antithesis  between  the  ius  civile  and  the 
ius  gentium,  and  finally  annihilates  the  fundamental 
principle  of  exclusiveness  upon  which  Rome  was 
founded  and  developed. 

The  spectacle  is,  in  many  respects,  one  of  the  most 
striking  and  imposing  in  ancient  history.1  Never- 
theless, there  must  have  come  to  more  than  one 
student  who  has  carried  his  point  of  view  beyond 
that  of  the  ordinary  text -book  of  Roman  law,  a  time 
when  he  has  been  himself  startled  by  the  perception 
of  a  fact  underlying  it  all,  similar  to  that  in  Greek 
history  which  so  deeply  impressed  the  mind  of  Free- 
man. It  has  been,  when  the  conviction  has  sud- 
denly come  upon  him  with  irresistible  force  that 
the  whole  development  here  described  in  Roman 
history  was  not  a  phenomenon  of  life  at  all,  but  a 
process  of  death ;  that  it  progressed  equally  with, 
and  side  by  side  with,  the  causes  which  were  slowly 
undermining  the  ancient  state;  and  that  it  was  in 
reality,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  but  a  phenomenon 
belonging  to  "the  same  group  of  symptoms  of  the 
decay  and  dissolution  of  the  life  of  the  Roman  em- 
pire with  which  he  had  been  so  familiar  elsewhere. 
It  was  not  with  the  cosmopolitan  principles  of  the 
ius  gentium,  but  with  the  stern  institutions  of  the  ius 

1  Cf.  Institutes  of  Roman  Law,  by  Rudolph  Sohm  (Oxford :  Clar. 
Press),  pp.  40,  41,  and  116-119. 


2l6  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

civile  that  the  life  of  ancient  Rome  was  bound  up. 
It  was  not  to  the  humanitarianism  of  Epictetus  and 
of  Marcus  Aurelius,  but  to  the  almost  savage  ex- 
clusiveness  of  the  moral  code  of  Aristotle,  that  the 
life-principle  of  the  ancient  civilisations  was  ulti- 
mately united.  Nay  more,  hard  as  it  may  be  at 
first  to  realise  it,  we  see  that  if  the  principles  which 
had  found  their  highest  expression  in  the  generous 
cosmopolitanism  of  the  later  Greek  philosophy,  and 
in  the  lofty  ideas  of  Roman  Stoicism,  had  been  in 
the  ascendant  in  the  ancient  world,  there  would 
have  been  no  Greek  civilisation,  there  could  have 
been  no  Roman  empire.  The  tendency  which  pro- 
duced the  results  with  which  we  are  concerned  was 
the  expression,  in  reality,  in  each  case  of  a  process  of 
dissolution.  It  involved  a  principle  absolutely  incom- 
patible with,  and  antagonistic  to,  the  life  of  the  civil- 
isation with  which  the  results  are  identified. 

This  is  the  first  great  truth  respecting  the  philoso- 
phy of  the  ancient  world  which  we  have  to  grasp  in 
all  its  applications.  Yet  we  have  to  get  farther  even 
than  this.  The  development  which  had  taken  place 
in  the  ancient  philosophy  was  not  only  incompatible 
with  the  life-principle  of  the  civilisation  which  had 
produced  it.  It  contained  no  life-principle  in  itself. 
There  remained  absolutely  unrepresented  in  it  the 
principle  which  was  to  constitute  the  characteristic 
evolutionary  significance  of  the  movement  about  to 
begin  in  the  world.  But  it  is  only  when  we  turn 
now  and  observe  the  relation  of  the  ancient  philoso- 
phy to  the  new  movement  opening  in  history  that 
we  come  to  understand,  on  the  one  hand,  why  this 
was  so ;  and  to  perceive,  on  the  other  hand,  wherein 


vii  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  217 

lay  the  distinctive  principle  of  that  movement  which 
was  to  constitute  it  an  evolutionary  force  of  the  first 
order  in  the  world. 

Now  it  will  probably  be  seen  at  no  remote  period 
in  the  future,  when  the  study  of  the  human  mind  is 
approached  from  the  standpoint  of  sociological  prin- 
ciples, rather  than  from  the  introspective  standpoint 
of  the  individual,  that  there  is  one  distinguishing 
characteristic  of  the  Christian  religion  to  which  all 
the  phenomena  thereof  with  which  science  is  con- 
cerned are  essentially  related.  We  have  present  in 
that  religion  underlying  all  its  phases,  however  varied, 
however  obscure,  one  central  phenomenon  which  con- 
stitutes not  only  the  essential  fact  of  its  inner  life, 
but  the  distinctive  principle  to  which  its  evolutionary 
significance  is  related.  It  is  the  opening  in  the  indi- 
vidual mind  of  the  terms  of  a  profound  antithesis,  of 
which  the  characteristic  feature  always  remains  the 
same,  namely,  that  it  is  incapable  of  being  again 
bridged  or  closed  by  any  principle  operating  merely 
within  the  limits  of  present  consciousness.  It  is  this 
antithesis  which  represents  the  expression  in  the  indi- 
vidual of  that  principle  in  human  evolution  which  is 
in  the  ascendant  in  modern  civilisation,  and  which  is 
characteristic  of  that  civilisation.  But  it  is  an  antith- 
esis which  is  not  represented  either  in  the  philosophy 
or  in  the  history  of  the  ancient  world. 

When  we  search  carefully  through  the  literature  of 
the  higher  philosophy  of  the  pagan  world  at  the  point 
at  which  the  Christian  movement  begins  to  impinge 
upon  it,  it  may  be  perceived  that  there  is  also  a  prin- 
ciple which  is  absolutely  characteristic  of  the  ancient 
philosophy.  Throughout  all  the  phases  of  Greek 


2l8  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

thought,  and  not  least  where  it  reaches  its  noblest 
expression  in  the  highest  minds,  it  may  be  distin- 
guished that  the  condition  of  virtue  was  regarded  as 
a  kind  of  stable  equilibrium  within  the  bounds  of 
social  or  political  consciousness.  There  was  no  con- 
ception of  any  antithesis  in  the  mind  of  the  individual 
within  these  limits.  The  wise  man  was  essentially 
the  virtuous  man.  It  was  the  business  of  the  wise 
man  to  discover  the  laws  of  the  world  around  him  to 
which  he  was  subject,  and  to  conform  to  them.  We 
have  seen  how  the  principle  of  the  untrammelled 
expression  of  nature  in  the  present  was  represented 
in  the  art  of  Greece  and  the  empire  of  Rome.  So 
also  in  the  standards  of  virtue  in  the  ancient  philoso- 
phy. All  virtue  was,  in  its  essence,  regarded  as  con- 
formity to  nature.  It  was,  therefore,  the  superiority 
of  the  wise  man  to  all  the  changing  reverses  of  for- 
tune, the  dignity  of  the  individual,  and  the  equilibrium 
of  the  intellect  which  constituted  the  dominant  note 
in  all  the  higher  philosophy  of  the  time.1 

The  two  great  rival  systems  of  Epicureanism  and 
Stoicism  were  really  the  same  in  this  respect.  Epi- 
cureanism in  its  founder  might  be  held  to  be  shrewd, 
calculating,  utilitarian  ;  in  Horace  it  might  sometimes 
be  taken  as  rising  to  a  consistent  heroism  amid  the 
crash  of  misfortune.  But  in  both  the  distinctive  fea- 
ture of  the  virtue  aimed  at  was  the  establishment  of 

1  In  Aristotle's  Ethics  (ii.-x.)  and  Plato's  Republic  and  Dialogues 
(e.g.  Protagoras),  as  in  the  Discourses  of  Epictetus  (I.  xii.-xiii.;  II.  i., 
and  III.  vii.-viii.)  and  the  Meditations  of  Marcus  Aurelius  (ii.-ix.),  the 
object  of  virtue,  it  may  be  distinguished,  is  assumed  to  be  to  get  the 
most  out  of  the  individual's  relations  to  the  existing  world  by  an  en- 
lightened and  philosophic  adjustment  of  the  desires  and  passions  in  all 
circumstances  whatever  which  might  arise. 


VII  THE   PRESENT  AND  THE   FUTURE  2IQ 

an  equilibrium  between  the  individual  and  his  sur- 
roundings. In  neither  was  there  a  conception  of  any 
antithesis  between  the  individual  and  any  principle 
which  transcended  all  his  interests  in  the  present. 
The  ideal  of  virtue  was,  in  short,  a  self-centred  stable 
equilibrium  in  the  present.  Stoicism  might,  and  did 
in  the  best  minds,  rise  to  a  high,  passionless  concep- 
tion of  philanthropy,  and  even  reach,  at  times,  to  a 
vision  of  the  fraternity  of  all  men.  But  we  distin- 
guish beneath  it  always,  that  its  main  effort  was 
directed  simply  towards  creating  a  kind  of  equilib- 
rium of  the  intellect  centred  in  self  and  in  the  pres- 
ent time.  It  reduced  all  virtue,  to  use  the  expressive 
words  of  a  modern  writer,  to  a  kind  of  majestic  ego- 
ism.1 Even  where  Stoicism  appeared  to  rise  beyond 
all  the  ends  of  the  present,  there  remained  in  reality 
the  same  relationship  of  consciousness  to  these  ends 
when  it  seemed  to  rise  superior  to  them.  As  death 
in  all  the  systems  was  either  avowedly  or  practically 
regarded  as  the  end  of  all  things  —  any  belief  to  the 
contrary  being  scarcely  more  than  a  sentiment  exer- 
cising no  practical  influence  in  relation  to  existing 
standards  of  conduct  —  so  the  Stoical  doctrine  of  the 
legitimacy  of  suicide  in  presence  of  misfortune  is,  in 
reality,  to  be  rightly  regarded  as  the  culminating  fea- 
ture of  the  ancient  philosophy.2  It  indeed  repre- 
sented the  last  supreme  effort  of  the  human  mind  to 
preserve  the  sense  of  its  own  equilibrium  and  suffi- 
ciency in  the  self-centred  present.  For  it  contained  the 
only  certain  refuge  against  despair  and  extreme  suffer- 
ing. "Remember,"  said  Epictetus,  "if  suffering  be  not 

1  Lecky's  History  of  European  Morals,  vol.  i.  p.  191. 
8  Ibid.  p.  222. 


22O  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

worth  your  while,  the  door  is  open."  l  "  Every  man's 
life,"  said  Marcus  Aurelius,  "  lies  all  within  the  pres- 
ent," a  and  "  if  the  room  smoke  I  leave  it,  and  there 
is  the  end."3  Notwithstanding,  in  short,  all  outward 
changes  which  took  place  in  the  later  stages  of  the 
higher  philosophy  of  Greece  and  Rome,  in  the  one 
fundamental  principle  which  underlay  the  entire  politi- 
cal, social,  and  moral  life  of  the  civilisation  they  rep- 
resented, there  was  no  change.  That  characteristic 
conception  of  the  ancient  world,  of  an  equilibrium 
between  virtue  and  existing  nature,  between  the 
individual  and  the  present,  between  the  present  and 
the  untrammelled  expression  therein  of  the  human 
will  and  of  human  desire,  was  still  everywhere  un- 
mistakably represented. 

Now  it  is  impossible  to  present  anything  more 
striking  to  the  imagination,  especially  when  we  begin 
to  distinguish  the  far-reaching  evolutionary  signifi- 
cance of  the  fact,  than  the  contrast  offered  to  all  this 
in  the  antithesis  which  we  see  now  opened  in  the 
human  mind  under  the  influence  of  the  new  religion. 
Almost  the  first  thing  to  be  noticed  when  we  turn 
first  of  all  to  the  history  of  the  religious  movement 
itself,  is  the  profound  change  which  has  taken  place 
in  the  standpoint  of  the  individual.  We  are,  as  it 
were,  in  a  new  world.  We  move  amongst  men  in 
whom  the  sense  of  an  equilibrium  between  the  indi- 
vidual and  his  surroundings,  between  the  individual 
and  his  interests  in  the  present,  between  the  indi- 
vidual and  his  own  nature,  has  been  absolutely 
annihilated. 

1  Discourses,  ii.  i.  3. 

2  Meditations,  hi.  x. ;  see  also  ii.  xiv. ;  and  viii.  xxv.  8  Ibid.  v. 


vn  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  221 

If  attention  is  confined,  first  of  all,  to  the  inner 
life  of  the  movement  itself,  we  may  perceive  evidence 
of  this  on  every  hand.  We  are  in  a  world  in  which 
it  is  no  longer  the  dignity  of  the  individual,  or  his 
virtue  as  the  expression  of  his  equipoise  in  a  kind  of 
imposing  egoism,  with  which  we  are  concerned.  It 
is  rather  the  profound  abasement,  the  utter  contempt 
of  self,  which  constitutes  the  characteristic  prevailing 
note  throughout  the  whole  range  of  the  phenomena 
we  are  regarding.  The  nature  of  the  revolution  is 
unmistakable.  There  is  no  fact  in  religious  history 
more  startling,  says  a  modern  writer,  than  the  radical 
change  which  has  taken  place  in  this  respect.1  For 
"  no  philosopher  of  antiquity  ever  questioned  that  a 
good  man  reviewing  his  life  might  look  upon  it  with- 
out shame  and  even  with  positive  complacency." 2 
But  all  this  has  been  changed.  The  antithesis  be- 
tween the  individual  and  the  world  around  him,  and, 
it  is  important  to  note,  between  the  individual  and 
his  own  nature,  has  become  one  of  the  most  striking 
spectacles  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind.  The 
conception  of  virtue  as  conformity  to  nature  has 
absolutely  vanished.  "  O  the  abyss  of  man's  con- 
science," says  St.  Augustine,  "...  my  groaning 
beareth  witness  ...  I  am  ashamed  of  myself  and 
renounce  myself."  8 

Even  where  we  see  the  adherents  of  the  new 
movement  prepared  to  meet  destiny  with  all  the 
outward  serenity  which  Stoicism  endeavoured  to 
supply,  we  may  perceive  how  entirely  altered  has 
become  the  standpoint  of  the  individual  mind. 

1  History  of  European  Morals,  by  W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  vol.  i.  p.  207. 

2  Ibid.  p.  207.  *  Confessions,  b.  x. 


222  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

"  What,"  asks  Marcus  Aurelius,  "  if  people  will  not 
let  you  live  as  you  would  ?  Why  then  leave  life,  but 
by  no  means  make  a  misfortune  of  it," 1  is  the 
haughty  reply  of  the  Stoic.  "  Let  your  tormenting 
irons  harrow  our  flesh,"  says  Tertullian  ;  "let  your 
gibbets  exalt  us,  or  your  fires  lick  up  our  bodies 
.  .  .  We  are  in  position  of  defence  against  all  the 
evils  you  can  crowd  upon  us."2  The  standpoint 
outwardly  is  the  same  ;  but  a  world  of  difference  be- 
tween the  two  is  revealed  when  we  reach  the  con- 
sciousness beneath  from  which  the  action  in  each 
case  is  proceeding.  The  attempt  of  the  Stoic  to 
preserve  the  dignity  and  equilibrium  of  the  Ego  in 
relation  to  the  surrounding  world  has  absolutely 
vanished.  The  consuming  desire  to  which  the  effort 
of  the  mind  corresponds  in  the  new  movement  is 
now  seen  to  transcend  all  the  ends  in  the  present  to 
which  human  consciousness  is  related.  "  My  God, 
my  life,  my  holy  joy,"  says  St.  Augustine,  "what  am 
I  to  Thee  that  Thou  demandest  love  from  me  .  .  . 
Hide  not  Thy  face  from  me.  Let  me  die  (that  I  die 
not)  that  I  may  see  Thy  face."  3 

As  we  continue  to  watch  the  inner  life  of  the 
movement  we  see  how  the  terms  of  the  antithesis 
become  gradually  more  and  more  clearly  defined. 
The  interesting  and  significant  observation  has  been 
made  that  it  was  only  during  the  early  period  of  the 
new  faith  in  Rome  that  the  epithet  "well-deserving," 
which  was  a  usual  inscription  on  the  tombs  of  the 
ancient  Romans,  continued  to  be  an  inscription  in 
the  Christian  catacombs.  The  surviving  influence 
which  this  indicated  of  one  of  the  most  fundamental 

1  Meditations,  v.  2  Apology,  cxxx.  *  Confessions,  i. 


vii  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  223 

ideas  of  the  pagan  world  soon  entirely  disappeared. 
With  the  development  of  the  Pelagian  controversy 
we  begin  to  realise  how  essential  and  inherent  in  the 
deeper  life  of  the  movement  is  the  antithesis  which 
has  been  opened  in  the  human  mind.  The  concep- 
tion of  the  innate  and  utter  insufficiency  of  the  indi- 
vidual gradually  becomes  visible  in  all  its  strength, 
as  with  the  banishment  of  Pelagius  in  418,  and  his 
condemnation  by  the  Council  of  Ephesus  in  431,  it 
bears  down  all  opposition.1  Where  in  the  ancient 
world  all  virtue  was  regarded  as  conformity  to  nature, 
where  the  wise  man  was  held  to  represent  a  kind  of 
stable  equilibrium,  where  all  evil  in  the  individual 
was  accordingly  regarded  as  disease,  we  are  met  now 
by  a  new  phenomenon.  We  see  the  religious  con- 
sciousness definitely  condemning  as  a  heresy  the 
doctrine  that  the  individual  is  able  by  his  own  natural 
powers  to  fulfil  the  entire  law,  and  to  do  every  act 
necessary  to  his  salvation.  We  have  a  new  religious 
concept  in  the  minds  of  men.  In  respect  of  no 
merely  human  virtue,  however  great,  is  it  now  re- 
garded as  possible  for  the  individual  to  render  him- 
self acceptable  to  the  Deity. 

It  may  be  noticed  on  every  hand  in  the  inner 
life  of  the  new  movement  during  the  first  centuries 
of  its  history,  how  great  is  the  interval  which  has 
begun  to  separate  us  from  the  standards  of  the 
ancient  civilisations.  We  see  that  not  only  has  hu- 
man consciousness  become  related  to  principles  which 
transcend  all  the  existing  interests  of  the  individual 
and  all  the  recognised  aims  of  the  State  ;  but  that  the 
conception  which  underlay  the  whole  fabric  of  the 

1  History  of  the  Later  Roman  Empire,  by  J.  B.  Bury,  vol.  I.  ii.  ix. 


224  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

religious,  ethical,  and  political  life  of  the  ancient 
civilisations,  namely,  that  of  an  equilibrium  between 
the  conditions  of  virtue  and  the  unrestrained 
expression  in  the  present  of  human  nature,  is  no 
longer  recognised.  Nay  more,  it  is  significant  to 
note  that  it  is  this  latter  conception  which  is  intui- 
tively singled  out  for  special  condemnation.  It  is 
the  doctrine  directly  contrary  to  it  of  the  entire  in- 
sufficiency of  the  individual  in  respect  of  his  own 
nature  to  fulfil  the  standards  required  of  him  by  any 
merit,  however  transcendent,  which  becomes  visible 
as  the  central  and  fundamental  principle  of  the  move- 
ment now  in  progress  in  the  world.1 

The  significance  of  the  position  here  being  de- 
veloped is  unmistakable.  The  fundamental  concept 
which  it  involves,  as  we  shall  realise  more  clearly 
later  on,  is  nothing  less  than  the  expression,  for  the 
time  being,  in  the  individual  mind  of  that  larger 
principle  of  the  evolutionary  process,  which,  if  we 
have  been  right  in  the  position  reached  in  the 
previous  chapters,  is  destined  in  time  to  control  all 
the  phenomena  of  history.  For,  by  the  concept  of 
the  entire  insufficiency  of  any  conduct,  however  meri- 
torious, and  of  the  utter  inability  of  the  individual, 
in  respect  of  his  own  nature,  to  rise  to  the  standard 
of  duty  required  of  him,  we  see  that  we  have  now 
opened  in  the  human  mind  an  antithesis  which  it 
becomes  impossible  to  bridge  again  in  any  scheme 

1  It  may  be  remarked  how  the  change  extended  to  the  conception 
of  the  Deity ;  Greek  and  Roman  deities  were  not,  on  the  whole,  re- 
garded as  holier  than  men.  "  Est  aliquid,  quo  sapiens  antecedat  deum. 
Ille  naturae  beneficio,  non  suo,  sapiens  est  :  ecce  res  magna,  habere 
imbecillitatem  hominis,  securitatem  dei "  (Seneca,  Epist.  53). 


vn        THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE      225 

of  ethics  conceiving  a  self-centred  equilibrium  in  the 
present  time ;  or  in  any  standard  of  duty  in  which 
virtue  is  made  to  correspond  to  conformity  to  the 
conditions  of  the  existing  world  around  us.  There 
is  involved,  in  reality,  nothing  less  than  the  definite 
passing  of  the  controlling  centre  of  human  conscious- 
ness out  of  the  present.  The  only  concept  by  which 
an  equilibrium  in  such  an  antagonism  can  be  again 
restored  must  involve,  not  only  a  rise  of  the  indi- 
vidual consciousness  to  the  cosmic ;  but  a  sense  of 
relationship  to  the  cosmic  as  direct,  as  personal,  and 
as  compelling  as  any  by  which  the  human  mind  has 
hitherto  been  related  to  the  present. 

As  the  mind  begins  to  slowly  apprehend  the 
relation  of  the  position  here  outlined  to  that  central 
principle  of  human  development  which  we  have  been 
insisting  on  throughout ;  namely,  that  the  present 
and  all  its  interests  is,  by  necessity  inherent  in  the 
evolutionary  process,  destined  in  time  to  pass  entirely 
under  the  control  of  the  future  and  the  infinite  ;  we 
feel  that  we  have  travelled  to  the  verge  of  the  state- 
ment of  a  natural  law  of  wide  reach  and  significance. 
As  we  look  forward  through  history  we  catch  a 
glimpse  for  a  moment  of  the  real  meaning  of  that 
fundamental  instinct  which,  since  the  opening  of  our 
era,  may  be  perceived  to  have  continuously  struggled 
to  obtain  scientific  expression  in  Western  thought  ; 
namely,  that  the  life  of  our  civilisation  involves  some 
principle  which  not  only  transcends  all  theories  of  an 
equilibrium  of  enlightened  self-interest  in  the  present, 
but  a  principle  which  cannot  be  included  in  any 
theory  of  the  corporate  interests  of  the  State,  how- 
ever extended.  Nay,  more,  there  flashes  on  the 
Q 


226  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

mind  at  this  point  a  first  view  of  the  scientific 
significance  in  the  great  drama  of  evolution  of  those 
concepts  of  the  Christian  religion,  such  as  "justifica- 
tion," "salvation,"  and  "atonement,"  over  which 
the  human  will  has  for  ages  waged  such  dogged, 
prolonged,  and  bitter  controversy.  They  are  con- 
cepts of  that  character  by  which,  in  the  epoch  in 
which  the  present  and  the  finite  begin  to  pass  under 
the  control  of  the  future  and  the  infinite,  the  antith- 
esis which  has  been  opened  in  the  human  mind 
can  alone  be  closed.  They  are  the  concepts  by 
which  the  human  mind  has  first  risen  to  that  neces- 
sary sense,  already  indicated,  of  direct  and  personal 
responsibility  to  principles  cosmic  in  their  reach. 
So  far,  however,  from  the  antithesis  itself  tending  to 
disappear,  what  we  begin  to  see  is  that  its  real  signifi- 
cance consists  in  the  fact  that,  under  whatever  form 
it  may  continue,  it  is  destined  to  endure ;  nay,  that  it 
constitutes  the  growing  feature  of  human  evolution, 
and  that  its  essential  meaning  involves  that  it  can 
never  be  closed  in  any  equilibrium  of  the  human 
mind  ringed  within  the  rim  of  the  present,  or  within 
any  boundaries  of  political  consciousness,  however 
widely  conceived. 

As,  in  the  light  of  the  fundamental  meaning  of 
this  antinomy,  we  follow  now  under  a  multitude  of 
forms  the  long  early  struggle  throughout  the  world 
of  the  new  movement  with  the  spirit  of  the  ancient 
philosophy,  it  is  remarkable  to  observe  how  the 
clear  scientific  principle  underlying  it  all  begins  to 
stand  out  at  every  important  crisis.  We  distinguish 
at  once,  for  instance,  even  beneath  all  the  phenomena 
of  ignorance  and  credulity  in  the  time,  the  outlines 


vii  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  227 

of  the  great  cosmic  principle  which  rises  through  the 
schisms,  the  movements,  and  the  controversies  of 
the  period  of  the  early  history  of  the  movement. 
It  is  almost  startling,  for  instance,  to  find  that  nearly 
all  the  leading  doctrines  eventually  condemned  as 
heresies  in  the  early  history  of  the  Christian  move- 
ment may  be  reduced  to  a  single  meaning.  They 
nearly  all,  we  may  distinguish,  represent  the  attempt 
to  bring  back  the  point  of  view  of  the  human  mind 
to  that  state  of  equilibrium  between  the  individual 
and  the  conditions  of  the  existing  world,  which 
formed  the  characteristic  principle  underlying  all 
human  institutions,  in  that  epoch  of  evolution  of 
which  the  life  of  the  ancient  civilisations  represented 
the  highest  phase.  They  nearly  all  represent,  there- 
fore, under  one  form  or  another,  the  attempt  either 
to  weaken  again  or  to  close  entirely  the  profound 
antithesis  opened  in  the  mind  as  the  controlling 
meaning  of  human  action  begins  to  pass  out  of  the 
present,  and  to  become  related  to  ends  no  longer 
comprised  within  the  limits  of  merely  political  con- 
sciousness. 

In  the  great  Gnostic  controversy,  for  instance,  of 
the  second  century,  as  in  later  controversies  of  a 
similar  kind  in  which  the  spirit  of  the  ancient  phi- 
losophy under  the  forms  of  Neo-Platonism  struggled 
with  Christianity,  we  may  distinguish  this  plainly. 
In  that  controversy  we  have  clearly  in  view  the  con- 
tinually expressed  tendency  to  lose  sight  again  of  the 
essential  nature  of  the  ideas  from  which  this  antithe- 
sis sprung.  And,  in  the  result,  we  have  equally 
clearly  in  view  the  fact  of  the  religious  consciousness 
finally  and  definitely  refusing  to  confuse,  or  lessen,  or 


228  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

attenuate  in  any  way  either  the  nature  or  the  dimen- 
sions of  the  antithesis,  by  insisting  upon  keeping 
clearly  in  view  the  central  concept  upon  which  it 
rested ;  namely,  the  insufficiency  of  the  individual 
and  the  resulting  necessity  of  what  is  described  as 
his  redemption  from  evil.  In  the  Arian  heresy  we 
have  in  view  a  similar  spectacle.  We  see  the  same 
profound  instinct  of  the  religious  consciousness  reso- 
lutely opposing  a  tendency  which  made  in  the  same 
direction.  We  see  it  persistently  resisting  any  weak- 
ening whatever  of  that  main  concept  associated  with 
the  work  of  the  Founder  of  Christianity  upon  which 
the  antithesis  rested ;  and  again,  in  the  result,  we 
see  it  once  more  retaining  undiminished  the  uncom- 
promising definition  of  the  cosmic  nature  of  the  con- 
cept by  which  alone  that  antithesis  could  be  bridged, 
and  the  individual  thereby  brought  into  a  sense  of  the 
closest  personal  responsibility  to  principles  infinite 
and  universal  in  their  reach.  In  the  Pelagian  con- 
troversy, at  last,  we  have  the  same  spectacle  repeated 
in  even  clearer  definition.  Through  more  than  a 
century  of  conflict,  from  the  Council  of  Ephesus  in 
431  to  the  Third  Council  of  Valence  in  530,  we  have 
the  attempts  again  and  again  repeated  to  close  the 
antithesis.  But  we  have  still  the  spectacle  of  the  re- 
ligious consciousness  set  unchangingly  against  the 
doctrine  of  the  normalcy  of  the  individual,  and,  there- 
fore, against  the  conception  of  virtue  as  conformity 
to  his  own  nature  in  the  conditions  of  the  world 
around  him.  Once  more  we  have  the  emphatic 
assertion  of  the  antithesis  in  its  most  inflexible  terms, 
in  the  doctrine  of  the  entire  insufficiency  of  the  in- 
dividual in  respect  of  his  own  powers  to  rise  to  the 


vil  THE   PRESENT  AND   THE  FUTURE  22Q 

standard  required  of  him,  or  to  fulfil,  in  virtue  of  his 
own  nature,  the  conditions  held  to  be  necessary  to 
his  salvation. 

The  mind  can  have  little  insight  into  the  nature  of 
the  central  position  involved  in  the  drama  of  human 
evolution  if  it  does  not  at  this  point  perceive  the  cos- 
mic reach  of  the  principle  into  the  action  of  which 
the  life  of  our  Western  civilisation  now  begins  to  be 
slowly  drawn.  As  we  turn  to  follow  the  movement 
proceeding  from  the  new  system  of  belief  in  its  first 
contact  with  the  outward  phenomena  of  the  world, 
what  it  is  of  the  first  importance  to  notice  is  the 
change  in  the  standpoint  of  the  human  mind  which  is 
in  preparation  beneath  the  face  of  history ;  a  change 
of  which  the  most  characteristic  results  are  as  yet 
immeasurably  distant  in  the  future ;  but  a  change, 
nevertheless,  so  fundamental  that  it  is  already  evi- 
dent that  there  must  proceed  from  it  a  sequence  of 
phenomena  entirely  different  from  any  before  wit- 
nessed in  the  development  of  society. 

In  this  change  it  is  always  the  character  of  the 
developing  antithesis  before  mentioned  which  must 
be  kept  in  view.  Almost  the  first  indication  through 
which  we  catch  sight  of  what  is  taking  place  beneath 
the  surface  of  society,  and  of  the  transforming  evolu- 
tionary significance  which  is  latent  in  the  concepts  of 
the  new  movement,  is  that  of  the  attitude  of  responsi- 
bility towards  human  life. 

We  have  seen  in  a  previous  chapter  how  the  life  of 
the  individual  was  regarded  in  the  Greek  and  Roman 
worlds  as  having  no  relation  to  any  ends  or  principles 
which  transcended  the  meaning  of  the  present,  as  ex- 
pressed within  the  limits  of  the  existing  political  con- 


23O  WESTERN   CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

sciousness.  The  points  at  which  the  private  life  of 
the  individual  in  the  days  of  the  Roman  empire  con- 
tinued to  come  into  direct  and  immediate  contact  with 
this  principle,  of  which  the  right  of  the  State  to  the 
life  of  the  individual,  and  the  power  of  the  paterfa- 
milias over  the  lives  and  persons  of  the  family  was  the 
outward  expression,  were  innumerable.  The  custom, 
however,  in  which  the  right  of  the  parent  to  dispose 
of  his  children,  even  to  death,  survived  in  all  its  primi- 
tive strength  down  into  the  first  centuries  of  the  era  in 
which  we  are  living,  was  that  of  the  exposure  of  infants. 

From  early  times  the  abandonment,  and  even  the 
actual  putting  to  death,  of  children  which  were  the 
result  of  legal  marriage,  but  which  were  considered 
either  surplus  or  useless,  was  a  general  custom  of  the 
poor  and  rich  alike  amongst  the  Greek  and  Roman 
peoples.  This  custom,  which  involved  no  moral  rep- 
robation, was  entirely  in  keeping  with  the  spirit  of 
the  ancient  world.  It  was  not  only  practised  from 
the  point  of  view  of  expediency  to  the  parent,  but  it 
was  defended  on  the  grounds  of  its  utility  to  the  com- 
munity, and  Seneca's  dictum  on  the  subject  in  one  of 
its  aspects,  "non  ira,  sed  ratio  est,  a  sanis  inutilia 
secernere,"  1  doubtless  faithfully  represented  the  pre- 
vailing average  view.  Such  of  the  exposed  children 
as  were  rescued  were  generally  brought  up  as  slaves, 
and  the  collecting  of  female  infants  to  be  so  reared 
and  to  be  afterwards  used  for  immoral  purposes  was 
often  followed  as  an  occupation  of  profit. 

One  of  the  earlier  results  of  the  changed  attitude 
towards  human  life  in  the  first  centuries  of  the  era  in 
which  we  are  living  was  the  diminution,  and  in  time 

1  De  Ira,  i.  15. 


vii  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  231 

the  cessation,  of  this  practice  of  infanticide.  Now  in 
a  certain  class  of  literature  where  the  attempt  is  made 
to  derive  morality  from  sympathy  and  the  association 
of  ideas,  the  effectiveness  of  humanitarian  ideals, 
arising  from  sympathy,  in  suppressing  a  practice 
such  as  infanticide  is  still  often  discussed.  We  can, 
however,  never  obtain  any  deep  insight  into  one  of 
the  most  distinctive  and  fundamental  principles  of 
our  civilisation  until  we  have  grasped  in  all  its  bear- 
ings a  fundamental  fact  connected  with  this  subject. 
This  is,  that  the  humanitarian  standards,  even  of  the 
later  time  in  which  we  are  living,  if  it  were  possible 
to  regard  them  as  separated  from  the  characteristic 
principle  of  our  civilisation  to  which  they  are  related 
and  from  which  they  proceed,  would  in  themselves 
represent  scarcely  more  than  a  kind  of  atavism,  or  a 
return  to  a  former  stage  of  evolution  undoubtedly 
once  represented  amongst  softer  and  more  effeminate 
peoples  long  extinguished  in  the  process  of  military 
selection  which  the  race  has  undergone.  It  was, 
beyond  doubt,  largely  owing  to  what  may  be  de- 
scribed as  a  long  process  of  discrimination  against 
those  softer  feelings,  that  the  stock  from  which  the 
foremost  peoples  of  the  present  day  are  descended 
won  its  way  to  the  destiny  which  has  devolved  upon 
it.  It  was  undoubtedly  in  virtue  of  this  cause  that 
the  races  which  produced  the  military  civilisations  of 
Greece  and  Rome  came  to  occupy  the  leading  place 
which  they  filled  in  the  world  in  the  past.  This  is 
the  fact,  in  short,  in  which  we  have  the  principal 
explanation  of  that  phenomenon  already  noticed, 
namely,  that  the  development  of  the  gentler  feelings 
in  the  ancient  civilisations  was,  in  itself,  not  only  pro- 


232  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

ductive  of  no  new  principle  of  life,  but  that  it  began 
with  the  period  of  decline,  and  progressed  pari  passu 
with  other  symptoms  of  decay. 

One  of  the  first  duties  of  the  scientific  observer  is, 
therefore,  to  recognise  in  all  its  bearings  the  preg- 
nant fact  that  the  deep  sense  of  responsibility 
towards  human  life,  of  which  we  have  here  the  first 
outward  symptom  and  which  is  destined  afterwards 
to  play  so  great  a  part  in  the  development  of  West- 
ern civilisation,  is,  at  the  point  at  which  it  is  first 
encountered,  presented  to  us  as  related  to  a  principle 
entirely  different,  not  only  in  degree,  but  in  kind,  to 
that  which  found  expression  in  the  humanitarianism 
of  the  ancient  philosophy.  The  fact  which  stands 
out  at  the  beginning  in  relation  to  the  cause  which 
suppressed  the  custom  of  infanticide  is  the  nature  of 
the  antinomy  which  has  been  opened  in  the  human 
mind.  We  are  not  in  the  presence  merely  of  the 
result  of  humanitarian  feeling.  We  are  watching  the 
first  influence  on  the  human  mind  of  concepts  by 
which  human  life  has  become  related  to  principles 
which  transcend  all  the  limits  of  the  present,  and  to 
responsibilities  beside  which  feelings  and  interests 
related  to  the  present  become  dwarfed  and  shrunken 
to  insignificant  proportions. 

A  concurrent  first,  and  also  outward  symptom  of 
the  fundamental  change  in  the  standpoint  of  the 
world  proceeding  beneath  the  surface  of  society,  of 
which  the  profounder  effects  were  also  as  yet  remote 
in  the  future,  was  that  immediately  indicated  in  the 
new  relation  of  the  human  mind  to  the  institution  of 
slavery.  It  has  been  a  main  end  of  endeavour  in  a 
previous  chapter  to  help  the  mind  to  clearly  realise, 


vn  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  233 

how  that,  despite  all  the  later  magnificence  of  the 
Greek  and  Roman  States,  these  civilisations  repre- 
sented the  governing  principle  —  raised  at  last  to  its 
highest  expression  — of  that  epoch  of  social  evolution 
in  which  all  prevailing  institutions  were  related  to  the 
same  ultimate  fact,  namely,  that  no  human  interest 
was  recognised  as  transcending  the  interest  of  the 
existing  social  order.  There  were  two  principal 
forms  in  which  this  fact  expressed  itself.  Within  the 
restricted  and  privileged  circle  of  this  social  order  the 
remainder  of  the  world  was  considered,  disguised 
though  the  fact  may  have  been  under  the  outward 
forms  of  a  comparatively  high  civilisation,  as  little 
more  than  "a  vast  hunting  ground  and  preserve  in 
which  men  and  their  works  should  supply  the  objects 
and  zest  of  the  chase."  1  Within  the  exclusive  circle 
this  attitude  of  the  members  to  the  outside  world 
was  repeated  and  reproduced,  in  the  relation  of 
society  itself  to  that  fundamental  institution  which 
underlay  the  whole  fabric  of  its  life ;  namely,  the 
institution  of  slavery  —  in  which,  in  the  searching 
words  already  used,  the  central  figure  was  a  being  to 
whom  society  stood  absolved  from  every  moral  obli- 
gation of  humanity,  and  in  whom  all  the  deepest  deg- 
radations were  lawful,  provided  they  were  commanded 
by  a  master. 

Now,  as  we  watch  the  conflict  of  the  new  system 
of  belief  with  the  institution  of  slavery,  it  has  to  be 
noticed  here  also  how  partial  and  incomplete  are  the 
still  surviving  explanations  of  the  change  which 
begins  to  take  place,  that  attribute  the  transition 
principally  to  the  altered  economic  conditions  of  the 

1  The  Beginning  of  the  Middle  Ages,  R.  W.  Church,  p.  26. 


234  WESTERN   CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

world,  or  to  the  growth  of  humanitarian  feeling.  The 
change  in  the  economic  conditions  in  Western  Eu- 
rope, as  the  slave  system  became  merged  in  the  colo- 
nate  and  serf  system,1  was  of  course  far-reaching  in 
its  effects.  But  a  brief  reflection  will  enable  the 
mind,  when  it  has  grasped  the  character  of  the  evolu- 
tionary process  as  a  whole,  to  see  that  the  economic 
change,  in  itself,  involved  no  new  principle  that  could 
have  carried  the  world  a  step  beyond  the  ruling  con- 
ditions of  the  past  under  which  slavery  had  been  a 
universal  institution.  The  economic  conditions  were 
themselves  only  secondary  causes  related,  in  the  last 
resort,  to  the  deeper  governing  principles  of  society. 
Similarly,  it  was  not  the  influence  simply  of  humani- 
tarian feeling,  nor  of  any  vague  conception  of  the 
rights  of  the  individual  under  some  imaginary  law  of 
nature  such  as  we  find  traces  of  in  the  Stoic  philos- 
ophy, that  furnishes  the  prime  cause  that  effected 
the  transformation  in  the  attitude  of  the  general  mind 
which  soon  began  to  take  place,  and  which  was  in 
time  to  abolish  the  institution  of  slavery  throughout 
Western  Europe.  When  we  catch  sight  of  the  nature 
of  the  underlying  principles  to  which  the  change  is 
related,  we  perceive  that  the  movement  against 
slavery  is  but  another  of  the  early  symptoms  of  the 
altered  standpoint  of  the  human  mind,  as  the  control- 
ling consciousness  in  the  evolutionary  process  rises 
to  a  sense  of  direct  responsibility  to  principles  trans- 
cending the  meaning  of  all  interests  comprised  within 
the  limits  of  political  society.2 

1  Cf.  History  of  the  Later  Roman  Empire,  by  J.  B.  Bury,  vol.  i.  iv.  iii. 

2  It  makes  no  difference  that  the   influence  behind  the  transition 
operated,  as  it  has  continued  to  operate  in  the  world,  to  a  large  extent 


VH  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  235 

From  an  early  period  it  may,  accordingly,  be 
noticed  how  incompatible  with  the  spirit  of  the  new 
movement  the  institution  of  slavery  became.  We 
continually  encounter  in  the  early  literature  of  the 
movement  the  emphatic  assertion  that  there  were 
neither  bond  nor  free  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
new  fellowship.  The  feeling  on  the  subject  is  to  be 
distinguished  in  innumerable  utterances  and  acts  of 
the  early  Church  Councils  against  slavery.  The 
standpoint  therein,  beneath  the  circumlocution  of 
ecclesiastical  expression,  is  ever  consistent  and  un- 
mistakable. We  are  always  in  the  presence  of  the 
same  antithesis,  in  which  the  controlling  centre  of 
human  action  is  seen  to  have  become  related  to  ends 
no  longer  included  within  the  horizon  of  merely  politi- 
cal consciousness;  an  antithesis  in  which  the  sense 
of  human  responsibility  now  involves  a  principle,  the 
meaning  of  which  is  no  longer  contained  within  the 
ideal  of  the  State.  It  is  pro  remedio  animae  meae,  or 
pro  peccatis  minuendis,  and  not  in  relation  to  any 
end  for  which  the  State  exists,  that  we  continually 
find  the  testator  of  the  Middle  Ages  manumitting  his 
slaves  on  death.  It  is  not  because  of  any  relation  of 
men  to  any  interest  in  the  existing  social  order,  but 
because  Redemptor  noster  totius  conditor  naturae 
humanam  carnem  voluerit  assumere,  that  we  find 
Pope  Gregory  the  Great  in  the  sixth  century  urging 
the  restoration  of  slaves  to  liberty. 

In  the  inner  life  of  the  movement  which  begins  to 
set  in  throughout  Europe  against  slavery  we  are  con- 
indirectly  ;  and  that  it  reached  the  minds  of  millions  of  men  who  were 
ignorant  of  its  origin,  only  through  its  effect  on  the  standards  of  pub- 
lic opinion. 


236  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

tinually  in  sight  of  the  same  principle.  Stripped  of 
all  the  phraseology  with  which  a  religious  movement 
has  surrounded  them,  and  reduced  to  the  terms  of  a 
clear  scientific  principle,  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to 
the  essential  relation  of  the  concepts  influencing 
men's  minds  to  that  shifting  of  the  controlling  centre 
in  the  evolutionary  process  which  we  have  endeavoured 
to  define  as  characteristic  of  the  development  proceed- 
ing in  our  civilisation.  They  are  all  reducible,  we  see, 
to  the  terms  of  the  same  fact.  We  are  in  the  presence 
of  a  principle  operating  in  the  human  mind  involving 
a  sense  of  relationship  to  ends  no  longer  comprised 
within  the  limits  of  the  State,  and  involving  a  sense 
of  responsibility  to  a  cause  which  transcends  all  the 
bounds  of  political  consciousness. 

These  are  all,  it  must  be  once  more  emphasised, 
but  the  first  outward  expressions  of  the  alteration  in 
the  standpoint  of  the  human  mind  which  was  in 
progress  deep  down  beneath  the  surface  of  society, 
and  of  which  the  profounder  evolutionary  results 
were  still  incalculably  remote  in  the  future.  At  the 
point  at  which  the  new  movement  came  into  relations 
with  the  outward  forms  of  the  Roman  empire,  it  is  the 
same  principle  which  furnishes  the  clue  to  the  phe- 
nomena we  are  regarding.  In  its  light  we  distinguish 
clearly  the  real  nature  of  that  vast,  half-formed,  sub- 
conscious instinct  of  the  populations  of  the  ancient 
world  against  the  new  belief  in  its  earlier  stages. 
Beneath  all  the  confusing  and  conflicting  phenomena 
of  distrust  and  hostility  resulting  from  the  contact  of 
the  movement  with  the  institutions  of  the  Roman 
world,  what  we  have  in  sight  is,  in  reality,  nothing 
less  than  the  ultimate  fact  of  the  pagan  world  instinc- 


vn  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  237 

tively  standing  at  bay  before  a  cause,  the  operation  of 
which  was  absolutely  incompatible  with  the  life-prin- 
ciple of  every  institution  which  was  characteristic  of 
it.  The  instinct  which,  in  the  Decian  persecution  of 
249,  and  in  the  Diocletian  persecution  of  303,  pro- 
duced deliberate  attempts,  supported  by  the  whole 
machinery  of  Roman  government,  to  extirpate  the 
new  system  of  belief  from  the  world,1  rightly  recog- 
nised the  essential  nature  of  the  movement  it  con- 
fronted. That  world,  which  could  behold  with 
tolerance  a  thousand  forms  of  religion  existing  under 
Roman  rule,2  but  in  all  of  which  it  nevertheless  saw 
the  highest  human  interests  and  the  highest  human 
ideals  still  conceived  as  comprised  within  the  limits 
of  the  State,  dimly  but  rightly  recognised  that  a  re- 
ligion by  which  there  was  opened  in  the  human  mind 
an  over-ruling  sense  of  responsibility  to  principles 
which  transcended  all  the  interests  of  the  State,  and 
all  the  ends  for  which  the  State  existed,  carried  men 
entirely  out  of  that  epoch  in  which  they  had  hitherto 
lived.  It  struck  at  the  very  roots  of  the  system  of 
social  life  around  them.  It  was,  therefore,  we  see, 
on  no  mere  cause  of  disrespect  to  the  gods,  or  of  im- 
piety to  the  emperor,  that  the  accusations  against 
the  adherents  of  the  new  movement  in  the  last 
resort  rested.  Profoundly,  but  clearly,  the  general 
mind  must  have  felt  the  difference  between  the 
spirit  of  that  movement  and  those  developments  of 
the  ancient  philosophy  which,  to  superficial  observa- 
tion, even  still  appear  to  run  in  the  same  direction. 
"The  philosophers,"  said  Tertullian,  "destroy  your 

1  Lecky's  European  Morals,  vol.  i.  pp.  449-468. 

*Cf.  Gibbon's  Decline  and  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  vol.  i.  chap.  xvi. 


238  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

gods  openly,  and  write  against  your  superstitions ; 
but  with  your  approbation.  Nay,  many  of  them 
not  only  snarl,  but  bark  aloud  against  the  emperors; 
and  you  not  only  bear  it  very  contentedly,  but  give 
them  statues  and  pensions  in  return."  It  is  only  us, 
he  adds,  you  throw  to  the  beasts  for  so  doing.1 

As  the  antithesis  continues  to  develop  in  the 
human  mind,  we  follow  it  under  a  multitude  of  forms. 
Crude,  coarse  and  even  repellent,  as  may  be  some 
of  these,  we  may  still  distinguish  beneath  the  surface 
that  they  are  all  reducible  to  terms  of  the  same 
principle. 

How  widely  removed  are  the  terms  involved  in 
the  antinomy,  how  world-embracing  is  the  character 
of  the  struggle  inherent  in  its  very  nature,  the 
evolutionist,  however,  only  begins  to  realise  to  the 
full  when  he  catches  sight  of  the  first  working  in 
history  of  that  principle  to  which  prominence  was 
given  in  a  previous  chapter,  and  to  which  the 
ultimate  meaning  of  every  phase  of  Western  history 
down  into  the  time  in  which  we  are  living,  continues 
to  be  closely  related  :  —  namely,  that  from  necessity, 
inherent  in  the  conditions  under  which  Natural  Selec- 
tion can  act,  it  is  only  the  peoples  amongst  whom  the 
qualities  contributing  to  efficiency  in  the  present  have 
reached  the  highest  development,  that  can  hold  the 
stage  of  the  world  during  the  period  in  which  it  be- 
comes the  destiny  of  the  present  to  pass  under  the 
control  of  the  future. 

In  the  middle  of  the  seventh  century  the  Western 
world  was  almost  suddenly  confronted  with  the  rise 
and  spread  of  Mohammedanism.  Looking  at  this 

1  Apology,  xlvi. 


vii  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  239 

system  of  belief  at  the  present  day  in  the  light  of  the 
principle  of  development  we  have  been  discussing 
throughout,  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  its  relation 
to  a  lower  stage  of  the  evolutionary  process  than  that 
which  the  potentiality  of  the  movement  in  progress 
in  Western  history  at  the  time  of  its  rise  represented. 
It  is  not  simply  in  respect  of  what  may  be  termed 
the  lower  concepts  of  Mohammedanism  that  this 
assertion  has  to  be  made.  It  has  to  be  noted  that 
even  in  the  highest  concepts  of  this  form  of  belief 
there  is  to  be  distinguished  only  the  same  restricted 
evolutionary  significance  which  we  saw,  on  analysis, 
was  to  be  attached  to  the  characteristic  heresies  of 
the  early  period  of  Christianity.  Nevertheless,  in  a 
short  period  Mohammedanism  swept  over  the  vast 
regions  associated  with  the  origin  of  Christianity, 
practically  accomplishing  the  complete  annihilation  of 
the  latter  amongst  the  softer  peoples  amongst  whom 
it  had  been  born  into  the  world.  Throughout  Syria, 
into  Egypt,  westward  throughout  Northern  Africa, 
and  then  northward  into  Spain  and  France,  the  move- 
ment was  carried  by  the  arms  of  its  adherents  in 
little  more  than  a  century  ;  the  tide  of  conquest  being 
only  stayed  at  last,  and  finally,  in  the  west,  on  the 
banks  of  the  Loire,  by  Charles  Martel  in  the  seven- 
day  battle  of  Tours  in  732. 

In  the  conditions  of  our  modern  civilisation, 
where  the  principles  regulating  a  rule  of  force  are 
often  greatly  misunderstood,  the  extreme  rapidity 
and  effectiveness  with  which,  in  certain  circum- 
stances, the  future  may  be  extinguished  in  the  womb 
of  the  present  is  scarcely  ever  realised.  There  are 
certain  simple  and  effective  acts  of  war  which  a 


240  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

nation,  a  people,  or  even  a  civilisation  cannot  survive. 
One  of  these  was  that  practised  by  the  Mohammedan 
conquerors ;  namely,  the  confiscation  of  women.  It 
was,  as  a  modern  writer  points  out,1  the  institution  of 
polygamy,  based  on  the  confiscation  of  the  women  in 
the  vanquished  countries,  that  permanently  secured 
the  Mohammedan  rule  in  the  countries  in  which  it 
became  established.  For  the  children  of  the  result- 
ing unions  immediately  gloried  in  their  descent 
from  their  conquering  fathers,  so  that  in  North 
Africa,  "in  little  more  than  a  single  generation,  the 
khalif  was  informed  by  his  officers  that  the  tribute 
must  cease ;  for  all  the  children  born  in  that  region 
were  Mohammedans,  and  all  spoke  Arabic."2  In 
scarcely  more  than  a  century,  in  short,  Christianity 
was  almost  completely  extinguished  in  southern  and 
eastern  countries ;  and  of  the  five  Christian  capitals 
of  the  world,  Jerusalem,  Carthage,  Alexandria,  Con- 
stantinople, and  Rome,  three — Jerusalem,  Carthage, 
and  Alexandria,  all  closely  associated  with  its  early 
history  and  development  —  were  lost ;  the  downfall 
of  the  fourth,  Constantinople,  the  capital  of  the 
Eastern  Roman  empire,  being  only  deferred. 

With  these  events  the  conditions  of  the  antinomy 
in  Western  history  may  be  said  to  be  complete.  It 
is  to  the  peoples  alone  who  represent  in  themselves, 
and  in  the  highest  development,  the  two  opposing 
terms  in  that  antinomy,  to  whom  the  future  is  hence- 
forward to  belong.  It  is  amongst  the  peoples  who 
represent  the  highest  expression  of  force  in  the 
world,  that  there  are  to  arise  the  conditions  in  which 

1  History  of  the  Conflict  between  Religion  and  Science,  by  J.  W. 
Draper,  chap.  iii.  2  Ibid. 


vii  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  241 

force  itself,  the  governing  principle  of  all  the  past 
development  of  the  race,  is  to  pass  out  under  the  con- 
trol of  a  higher  principle  of  human  efficiency.1  It  is 
not  upon  the  softer  Eastern  races,  who  may  be  said 
to  have  represented  but  one  term  of  the  antithesis,2 
that  the  work  in  the  new  era  has  devolved.  It  is  to 
the  barbarian  out  of  the  twilight  of  the  stern  north  ; 
to  the  man  able  to  do  all,  able  to  dare  all  ;  to  the  man 
able,  as  has  been  finely  said,  to  live  his  life  as  a  man 
amongst  men,  while  yet  bearing  ever  hidden  within 
his  breast  the  little  scroll  of  the  higher  ideal,3  that 
the  future  of  the  world  has  passed. 

It  is  in  the  light  of  the  bearing  of  these  facts  on  a 
wider  development  to  come  that  we  have  to  view  the 
sombre  significance  of  what  may  be  called  the  last 
act  of  the  conversion  of  the  military  races  of  North- 
ern Europe  to  the  Christian  religion.  In  that  act  we 
see  Charlemagne,  the  barbarian  chief  of  these  races, 
becoming,  in  effect,  in  the  year  800,  protector  of  the 
Bishop  of  Rome.  And  in  return  we  see  the  head  of 
the  new  religion  in  Western  Europe  placing  what 
men  still  held  to  be  the  crown  of  the  Caesars  —  the 
outward  symbol  of  that  empire  in  which  the  military 
epoch  of  human  evolution  culminated  —  upon  the 

1  The  essence  of  this  position,  as  it  has  been  defined  in  a  previous 
chapter,  consists  in  the  fact  that  it  is  only  the  peoples  amongst  whom 
the  qualities  contributing  to  efficiency  in  the  present  have  reached 
their  highest  development,  that  can  hold  the  stage  of  the  world  during 
that  epoch  of  human  evolution  in  which  it  becomes  the  destiny  of  the 
present  to  pass  under  the  control  of  the  future. 

2  Cf.  "  Race  and   Religion  in  India,"  by  A.  M.  Fairbairn,  Contem- 
porary A'ez'ifU',  No.  404. 

8  Lord  Rosebery,  address  at  Winchester,  King  Alfred  Millenary 
Commemoration. 

R  341 


242  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

head  of  the  leader  and  representative  of  the  peoples 
upon  whom  the  destinies  of  a  new  world1  had 
devolved. z  Many  Continental  historians,  and  in 
England  the  late  Professor  Freeman,  and,  in  partic- 
ular, Mr.  Bryce,  have  done  much  to  enable  us  to 
realise  the  significance  in  history  of  this  act.  But  to 
the  mind  of  the  evolutionist  it  must  possess  even  a 
deeper  meaning  than  any  which  the  historian,  occu- 
pied with  the  relations  of  the  shadowy  Holy  Roman 
Empire  —  an  ideal  beyond  which  the  evolutionist 
sees  the  world  to  have  moved  even  at  the  moment  of 
its  inception  —  has  been  able  to  give  it. 

It  is  upon  the  antinomy,  slowly  developing  beneath 
the  surface  of  history,  which  the  act  suggests  rather 
than  represents,  that  the  scientific  imagination  con- 
tinues to  be  concentrated.  There  is  no  more  pro- 
foundly dramatic  spectacle  in  history  than  that  of  the 
Teutonic  peoples  of  the  ninth  century  being  slowly 
involved  in  the  sweep  of  the  movement  which  has 
now  begun  to  fill  the  Western  world ;  of  Charle- 
magne endeavouring  through  the  capitularies3  to 
govern,  in  the  terms  of  St.  Augustine's  De  Civitate 
Dei?  a  world  still  removed  but  a  little  from  the  back- 
ground of  universal  paganism  ;  of  an  emperor  at- 

1  It  was  a  world,  nevertheless,  in  which  the  history  of  Western  civ- 
ilisation was  to  become  outwardly  continuous,  and  in  which  no  gain 
nor  product  of  the  civilisations  of  Greece  or  of  Rome  was  to  be  even- 
tually lost  to  us;  even  though  they  were  to  be  taken  up,  for  the  most  part, 
as  disintegrated  organic  products  are  taken  up  by  a  new  system  of  life 
subject  to  other  laws  of  vitality. 

2  Cf.   The  Holy  Roman  Empire,  by  James  Bryce,  chap.  iv. 

8  Cf.  Capitulary  of  Charlemagne,  issued  in  802,  Select  Historical 
Documents  of  the  Middle  Ages,  by  E.  F.  Henderson,  ii.  ii. 

4  St.  Augustine's  De  Civitate  Dei  was  the  favourite  reading  of 
Charlemagne. 


vii  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  243 

tempting  to  regulate  through  the  Missi  Dominici 
vast  populations  to  whom  the  new  movement  is 
scarcely  more  than  a  name,  begging  them  "  for  their 
souls'  sake"  to  pay  the  just  penalties  of  their  patri- 
cides, their  fratricides,  and  their  murders,"  by  which 
many  Christian  people  perish."  1  We  see  the  Pope 
who  has  crowned  him  living  in  a  world  in  which  the 
forms,  the  institutions,  the  very  ideals  and  the 
thoughts,  are  all  as  yet  cast  in  a  mould  scarcely 
more  than  pagan.  Yet  we  see  each  standing  not 
simply  on  the  threshold  of  another  order  of  civilisa- 
tion, but  in  the  vestibule  of  a  new  epoch  of  human 
evolution,  dreaming,  pope  and  emperor  alike,  each  he 
knows  not  what  —  dreaming  of  the  accomplishment 
in  a  lifetime,  in  a  thousand  years,  in  a  thousand 
decades,  of  a  transformation  immeasurably  greater 
in  reach  than  that  which  has  already  occupied  untold 
aeons  of  human  development. 

In  this  world,  still  pagan  in  all  its  outward  forms, 
still  to  remain  scarcely  more  than  pagan  in  forms, 
and  even  in  spirit,  for  ages  to  come,  there  have 
been  unloosed  forces  destined  never  again  to  be 
bound  ;  forces  destined  to  make  impossible  all  the 
ideals  of  the  State,  and  of  government,  and  of  society, 
under  which  men  had  hitherto  lived.  The  monks  of 
Cluny  have  already  begun  to  see  visions  of  a  kingdom 
greater  than  the  world,  and  withal  a  kingdom  of 
the  world.3  They  are  dreams  greater  than  the 

1  Capitulary  of  Charlemagne,  E.  F.  Henderson's  Select  Historical 
Documents  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

aCf.  Letter  of  Gregory  VII.  to  Bishop  Hermann  of  Metz,  March 
1 5th,  1081,  Henderson's  Select  Historical  Documents  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  iv.  Gregory  VII.  was  one  of  the  three  popes  who  in  the  eleventh 
and  twelfth  centuries  went  forth  from  Cluny. 


244  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

poor  dreamers  who  have  dreamed  them  ;  nursed 
in  the  spirit  of  a  pagan  world,  seeing  only  through 
its  images,  and  thinking  only  through  its  thoughts. 
But  they  are  dreams  of  which  no  one  who  has 
caught  the  meaning  of  the  controlling  principle 
of  the  evolutionary  drama  unfolding  itself  in  human 
society,  will  be  likely  in  future  to  miss  the  signifi- 
cance. They  are  dreams  in  which  we  feel  the  very 
pulses  of  the  cosmos  ;  they  are  visions  through 
which  there  runs  the  inner  spirit  of  that  antithesis 
which  can  never  again  be  closed  within  any  limits  of 
the  State  or  of  the  social  consciousness. 

Far  down  in  the  under  strata  of  society  we  already 
begin  to  catch  the  meaning  of  that  spirit  which 
springs  from  the  antithesis  which  has  been  opened 
within  the  State ;  that  spirit  which  is  destined  to 
dissolve  every  principle  upon  which  the  State  has 
hitherto  rested ;  that  spirit  of  responsibility  to  prin- 
ciples transcending  the  interests  of  the  family,  of 
blood-relationship,  of  party,  and  of  the  State  itself  ; 
which  is  to  enfranchise  not  simply  the  slave  and  the 
serf,  but  the  sullen,  long-bound,  silent  peoples  ;  which 
is  to  question  not  simply  the  right  of  kings,  but  of 
majorities ;  nay,  the  right  of  force  itself,  that  last 
basis  upon  which  every  ideal  that  men  had  hitherto 
known  in  the  world  had  ultimately  rested. 

It  is  a  world  to  all  appearance  sunk  many  degrees 
below  the  level  of  the  civilisations  which  it  succeeded, 
a  world  scarcely  to  be  distinguished  in  its  outward 
features  from  primitive  barbarism,  a  state  of  social 
order  in  which  feudalism  —  that  protest  of  barbarism 
against  itself,  to  use  the  expressive  simile  of  Hegel  — 
is  still  to  reach  its  fullest  development.  But  it  is  a 


vii  THE  PRESENT  AND  THE  FUTURE  245 

new  world  ;  a  world  like  the  wrack  of  a  nebula  in 
space,  its  chaos  and  disorder  invisibly  caught  in  the 
sweep  of  an  integrating  principle  infinite  in  reach. 
Through  unmeasured  epochs  of  time  there  has  come 
down  to  us  the  sound  of  that  struggle,  still  with  us, 
in  which  the  individual  and  all  his  powers  and  inter- 
ests are  being  broken  to  the  ends  of  a  social  efficiency 
visibly  and  consciously  embodied  in  the  State.  But 
now  into  the  vortex  of  a  vaster  struggle,  a  struggle 
in  which  the  interests  of  society  itself  are  destined 
to  be  broken  to  the  ends  of  an  efficiency  beyond  the 
furthest  limits  of  its  political  consciousness,  we  are 
about  to  witness  being  slowly  drawn,  all  the  phenom- 
ena of  Western  thought  and  of  Western  action  ;  all 
the  content  of  politics,  of  philosophy,  and  of  religion 
in  our  Western  world. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    GREAT    ANTINOMY    IN 
WESTERN    HISTORY  :    FIRST    STAGE 

IT  is  now  possible  for  the  intellect  in  some  measure 
to  grasp  the  outlines  of  the  conflict  in  which  the 
entire  life  and  activities  of  our  Western  civilisation 
have  begun  to  be  involved.  That  principle  of  the 
evolutionary  process  which  has  been  designated 
the  law  of  Projected  Efficiency  —  under  the  operation 
of  which,  in  human  society,  the  present  is  destined 
to  be  in  the  end  controlled,  not  by  its  own  interests, 
but  by  interests  in  the  future  beyond  the  limits  of 
its  political  consciousness  —  has  reached  at  last  in 
history  the  stage  upon  which  its  more  characteristic 
results  begin  to  be  visible.  In  the  development  of 
the  great  antinomy  now  opened  in  Western  history, 
in  which  we  have  the  growing  definition  through  the 
stress  of  the  centuries,  of  the  present  becoming 
envisaged  with  the  principles  governing  a  future  to 
which  it  must  be  subordinated,  we  have  beyond 
doubt  the  most  important  and  imposing  spectacle 
with  which  science  can  be  concerned.  All  the  work 
which  has  been  done  in  other  fields,  in  helping  us  to 
understand  the  governing  principles  of  the  evolu- 
tionary process  in  general,  comes  now  but  to  sub- 
serve the  main  end  of  enabling  the  intellect  to  grasp 
the  character  of  the  development  which  here  begins 
to  unfold  itself  in  society  beneath  our  eyes. 

246 


CHAP,  vin       THE   GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE      247 

We  have  seen  how  that  throughout  the  first  epoch 
of  social  evolution  all  the  forms  of  society  and  of  the 
State,  and  of  every  institution  upon  which  the  State 
and  society  rested,  had  borne  upon  them  the  impress 
of  a  single  fact,  namely,  the  ascendency  of  the  pres- 
ent. In  such  conditions,  therefore,  every  human 
institution  may  be  said  to  have  constituted  a  kind  of 
closed  imperium,  in  which  the  ascendant  interests  and 
the  ruling  passions  were  those  through  which  the 
present  was  able  to  express  itself  in  its  highest 
potentiality.  What  we  have  now  to  witness  is  the 
spectacle  of  all  these  closed  imperiums,  in  which  the 
present  hitherto  ruled  omnipotent  in  thought  and 
action,  being  slowly  broken  up  by  a  cause  acting  on 
the  foundations  upon  which  they  rested  ;  while  the 
human  energies  hitherto  imprisoned  within  them  are 
released  into  an  entirely  new  order  of  progress.  In 
the  result  we  have  to  witness  the  gradual  develop- 
ment in  Western  history  of  such  conditions  of  social 
efficiency  as  were  not  only  unimagined  in  the  world 
in  the  past,  but  which  were  impossible  under  any 
organisation  of  society  which  had  hitherto  prevailed. 

As  the  character  of  the  new  process  becomes  visible 
it  may  be  seen  to  consist  essentially  in  the  develop- 
ment throughout  the  whole  social  organisation  of  the 
conditions  of  a  free  conflict  of  forces  ;  this  conflict 
possessing  two  well-marked  and  characteristic  features. 
It  is,  in  the  first  place,  as  has  been  said,  a  free  con- 
flict of  forces  such  as  in  reach,  in  intensity,  and  in 
efficiency  has  never  before  prevailed  in  human  society. 
But  it  is,  in  the  second  place,  a  free  conflict,  the 
efficiency  and  even  the  very  existence  of  which  is 
dependent,  nevertheless,  on  a  single  condition,  namely, 


248  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

that  the  controlling  meaning  to  which  human  con- 
sciousness has  become  related  is  no  longer  in  the 
present  time.  The  distinctive  life-principle  of  the 
conflict,  under  all  its  changing  features,  is,  in  short, 
that,  as  the  controlling  principles  of  human  con- 
sciousness and  of  human  responsibility  are  no  longer 
in  the  present,  it  has,  therefore,  become  impossible 
to  shut  up  again  the  human  will  in  any  system  of 
thought,  of  action,  of  government,  or  even  of  reli- 
gion, through  which  the  tyranny  of  the  forces  tend- 
ing to  express  themselves  in  the  present  could  once 
more  become  absolute  and  omnipotent. 

It  is  only  as  the  inter-relation  of  these  two  features 
of  the  modern  phase  of  the  evolutionary  process  be- 
comes visible  to  the  mind  that  the  tendencies  of  the 
developing  type  of  life  represented  in  our  Western 
civilisation  can  be  fully  grasped.  All  Western  history, 
down  to  the  time  in  which  we  are  living,  is  but  the 
record  of  the  successive  phases  of  the  slowly  widening 
struggle  in  which  the  foundations  of  the  closed  impe- 
riums  through  which  the  ascendant  present  had  hitherto 
expressed  itself  are  being  broken  up  and  dissolved. 
As  a  step  towards  understanding  the  nature  of  the 
process  in  its  later  and  more  important  aspects,  it  is 
necessary  now  to  concentrate  attention  for  a  short 
space  on  that  first  and  stupendous  phase  of  it  which 
precedes  the  rise  of  the  modern  world.  It  is  a  phase 
in  which  we  have  the  history  of  the  struggle  to  which 
the  essential  meaning  of  the  whole  period  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  is  related ;  a  struggle  in  the  development  of 
which  the  history  of  every  Western  country  for  nearly 
500  years  becomes  scarcely  more  than  a  subordinate 
and  contributing  chapter. 


vill  THE   GREAT   ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE  249 

Now,  as  soon  as  the  mind,  after  prolonged  study  of 
the  development  which  sets  towards  the  modern  world 
from  the  Middle  Ages,  is  able  to  withdraw  itself  to  a 
position  of  detachment,  from  which  alone  it  is  possible 
to  get  the  proper  focus  to  view  the  outlines  of  the 
antinomy  in  Western  history  with  which  we  are  about 
to  be  concerned,  there  is  presented  to  it  a  phenome- 
non the  first  view  of  which  is  likely  to  take  it  com- 
pletely by  surprise. 

Students  of  the  writings  of  the  late  Sir  Henry  Maine 
will  remember,  that  almost  from  the  earliest  of  the 
works  of  this  jurist  down  to  his  latest  criticisms  of 
politics,  there  runs  the  influence  of  a  conviction  often 
clearly  and  strongly  expressed  by  him  in  words ; 
namely,  that  the  modern  philosophy  of  society  had 
not  as  yet  given  us  the  explanation  of  the  difference 
between  the  recently  developed  and  rapidly  progress- 
ing societies  of  our  Western  world  and  that  almost 
stationary  social  state  which  he  perceived  to  have  been 
normal  to  the  race  throughout  the  greatest  part  of  its 
past.1  The  cause  of  this  difference  Maine  held  to  be, 
"one  of  the  great  secrets  which  inquiry  has  yet  to 
penetrate."  2 

In  an  early  chapter  of  the  treatise  on  Ancient  Law, 
in  which  this  subject  is  first  discussed,  Maine  called 
attention  to  the  fact  that  in  the  history  of  all  the 
families  of  mankind  there  has  occurred  "a  stage  at 
which  a  rule  of  law  is  not  yet  discriminated  from  a 
rule  of  religion";3  the  characteristic  of  this  stage 
being,  as  he  pointed  out,  that  "the  members  of  such 
a  society  consider  that  the  transgression  of  a  religious 

1  Cf.  Ancient  Law,  pp.  22-24,  and  Popular  Gwernment,  p.  170. 
*  Ancient  Law,  p.  23.  •  Ibid.  pp.  22-24. 


250  WESTERN   CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

ordinance  should  be  punished  by  civil  penalties,  and 
that  the  violation  of  a  civil  duty  exposes  the  delinquent 
to  divine  correction.1  It  was  this  stage,  as  we  said  in 
a  previous  chapter,  which  lasted  down  into  the  midst 
of  the  civilisations  of  the  ancient  world.  It  was  only 
the  Romans,  as  Bluntschli  points  out,  who  first  began 
to  distinguish  law  from  morality ; 2  and  so  far  as  the 
distinction  went,  even  amongst  them,  it  was  practically 
a  product  of  the  later  empire.  The  ascendency  of 
the  ruling  principle  of  the  stage  to  which  Maine  re- 
fers may  be  seen  throughout  Roman  history  in  the 
conception  of  the  priesthood  as  a  political  office,  in 
the  ascription  to  the  emperor  down  to  a  late  period 
of  divine  attributes,  and  in  the  conceptions  of  the 
ceremonies  and  functions  of  the  Roman  State  as 
religious  in  character. 

Now  in  order  to  understand  the  character  of  the 
phenomenon  we  are  about  to  consider,  we  must  be 
able  to  realise  that,  if  we  have  been  right  in  the  posi- 
tion taken  up  in  the  previous  chapters,  this  prolonged 
stage  of  human  evolution  to  which  Maine  here  refers, 
—  the  period,  that  is  to  say,  in  which  a  rule  of  religion 
and  a  rule  of  law  are  identical  —  is  nothing  else  than 
that  stage  of  development  we  have  discussed  at  length 
in  a  previous  chapter ;  namely,  that  in  which  the  con- 
trolling centre  of  the  social  process  being,  as  yet,  in 
the  present  time,  all  the  ends  to  which  the  religious 
consciousness  relates  are  either  directly  or  indirectly 
connected  with  the  interests  of  the  existing  individual 
as  a  member  of  the  social  order  present  around  him. 
It  is  the  stage  in  which  the  interests  with  which  reli- 

1  Ancient  Law,  pp.  22-24. 

2  The  Iheory  of  the  State,  by  J.  K.  Bluntschli,  I.  iii. 


VIII  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          2$ I 

gion  is  concerned,  and  the  interests  with  which  poli- 
tics are  concerned,  are  as  yet,  to  all  intents  and 
purposes,  coincident  and  coextensive. 

The  great  secret,  in  short,  on  the  brink  of  which 
Maine  was  standing,  and  towards  the  elucidation  of 
which  he  saw  the  course  of  modern  inquiry  was  tend- 
ing, was,  we  begin  to  see  now  —  if  we  may  anticipate 
a  conclusion  the  significance  of  which  we  shall  under- 
stand more  clearly  in  a  later  chapter  —  that  it  has 
been  the  projection  of  the  controlling  principles  of 
human  consciousness  beyond  the  present,  which  is 
breaking  up  all  the  imperiums  through  which  the 
omnipotent  present  would  otherwise  shut  down  upon 
us ;  and  which  has  given  us,  in  the  result,  the  era 
of  that  free  conflict  of  forces  in  which  our  modern 
progressive  societies  have  taken  their  rise. 

As  soon  as  we  thus  hold  in  hand  the  clue  to  the 
evolutionary  drama  upon  which  the  curtain  continues 
to  rise  in  Western  history,  we  are  in  a  position  to 
understand  something  of  the  nature  of  the  phenomena 
upon  which  our  attention  is  now  to  be  concentrated. 
The  meaning  of  the  conflict  which  underlies  the 
developmental  process  in  progress  in  the  world  around 
us,  is  that  it  is  a  conflict  in  which  the  present  has 
become  envisaged  with  the  future  in  a  struggle  in 
which  it  is  destined  to  be  eventually  subordinated  to 
the  future.  But  the  remarkable  result  we  have  now 
to  consider  is,  that  the  battle-ground,  upon  which  the 
opening  phase  of  this  gigantic  struggle  between  the 
present  and  the  future  is  to  be  fought  out  in  our  civili- 
sation, lies,  of  necessity,  in  the  first  place,  in  the  cen- 
tre of  that  system  of  belief  in  which  the  potentiality 
of  this  process  of  subordination  appears  to  be  inherent. 


252  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

The  first  political  idea  which  we  see  developing  in  the 
minds  of  men  in  connection  with  this  system  of  belief, 
is,  in  short,  one  in  which  it  is  considered  that  a  rule 
of  religion  and  a  rule  of  law  should  again  become,  as 
in  the  ancient  world,  coincident  and  coextensive. 

Now  in  the  last  chapter  we  saw  how  consistently, 
and,  after  long  struggle,  the  principles  involved  in 
the  new  system  of  belief  overcame  at  last  all  the  at- 
tempts made,  in  what  are  called  the  heresies  of  the 
first  centuries  of  our  era,  to  bring  the  human  mind 
back  to  the  self-centred  standpoint  of  the  ancient 
philosophy ;  and  how  profound  was  that  instinct 
which  in  the  early  councils  of  the  new  religion 
resisted  the  efforts  that,  through  the  concepts  of 
Neo-Platonism,  would  have  closed  again  the  very  an- 
tithesis opened  in  the  human  mind  wherein  lay  all 
the  characteristic  potentiality  of  the  future.  What 
we  have  now  to  watch  is  this  same  conflict  assuming 
another  form,  and  being  raised  to  another  plane. 
The  objective  which  becomes  visible  in  the  world  in 
the  new  struggle  is  that  of  a  condition  of  society  in 
which  a  rule  of  religion  shall  again  be  made  coinci- 
dent and  coextensive  with  a  rule  of  law,  and  in  which 
there  may,  therefore,  be  observed,  after  a  time,  the 
same  tendency  to  obscure  that  profound  antithesis 
opened  in  the  human  mind  wherein  lay  all  the  dis- 
tinctive potentiality  in  the  future  of  the  new  form  of 
belief. 

In  the  resulting  struggle  around  this  ideal,  almost 
the  entire  intellectual  and  political  activities  of  our 
Western  world  become  for  the  time  being  involved. 
The  influence  of  the  conflict  has  lasted  down  even  to 
the  present  day,  and  is  still  with  us  under  many 


vin  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST  STAGE          253 

forms.  To  perceive  the  bearing  of  the  conflict  on 
the  process  of  our  social  evolution  is  the  first  step 
towards  understanding  the  principles  of  modern  his- 
tory. Let  us  see  now  if  we  can  place  the  nature  of 
the  issue  involved  clearly  before  us. 

In  one  of  his  essays  Sir  Frederick  Pollock  brings 
clearly  into  view  a  fundamental  fact  of  social  devel- 
opment, the  significance  of  which  is  apparent  on 
reflection  ;  but  the  perception  of  which  is  calculated 
to  come  upon  the  mind,  in  the  first  instance,  with 
something  of  the  nature  of  a  shock.  It  is  that  in 
human  history  theological  persecution,  in  the  strict 
sense,  is  of  entirely  recent  origin.1  Or  to  put  the 
statement  in  the  more  emphatic  words  used  by  Mr. 
Ritchie  in  a  chapter  of  his  Natural  Rights,  persecu- 
tion—  viewing  it  as  an  historical  fact,  and  apart  from 
any  discussion  as  to  whether  it  is  involved  or  not  in 
the  true  interpretation  of  the  tenets  of  the  religion 
now  associated  with  our  civilisation  —  "persecution 
in  the  sense  of  repression  for  the  purposes  of  main- 
taining true  doctrine  is  the  outcome  of  Christianity."  2 

However  startling  this  statement  may  appear  at 
first  to  the  ordinary  mind,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that,  as  the  expression  of  a  fact  of  history,  it  is  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  strictly  true.  The  contradic- 
tion, indeed,  which  immediately  suggests  itself  to  the 
mind  as  being  capable  of  being  supplied  by  that  vast 
body  of  evidence  seemingly  pointing  in  another 
direction  ;  which  is  furnished  in  that  stage  of  devel- 
opment when  the  deities  worshipped  are  regarded  as 
the  special  patrons  of  the  community  —  evidence  of 

1  Cf.  Essays  in  Jurisprudence  ami  Ethics,  pp.  145-175. 
a  Natural  lights,  by  D.  S.  Ritchie,  c.  viii. 


254  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

which  the  persecutions  of  Christianity  itself  under 
the  Roman  empire,  or  of  the  punishment  of  religious 
innovators  like  Socrates  in  the  Greek  civilisation, 
may  be  taken  as  examples  —  vanishes  immediately 
on  inquiry.  For  what  we  see  is  that  nearly  all  such 
persecutions,  preceding  the  rise  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion, prove  on  examination  to  have  been  really 
related  to  what  are  usually  known  as  temporal  or 
secular  ends.  There  was  absolutely  no  concern  with 
what  becomes  afterwards  known  in  controversy  as 
the  spiritual  interest  of  the  offender  himself.  The 
gravamen  of  the  charges  against  the  acts  or  opinions 
of  the  accused  person,  lay  strictly  in  the  fact  that 
such  acts  or  opinions  were  held  to  be  calculated  to 
bring  temporal  evil  or  injury  to  the  existing  social 
organisation  or  its  members.1 

It  may  be  distinguished  that  this  was  the  point 
of  view  even  where  the  acts  or  opinions  were  con- 
demned because  they  were  held  to  be  displeasing  to 
the  deity.  For  it  was  the  tangible  results  of  the 
withdrawal  of  the  favour  of  the  tutelar  deity  or 

1  For  instance,  in  Plato's  dialogue  Euthyphron  —  in  which  Socrates 
is  represented,  after  his  indictment  by  Melitus  for  impiety  in  introduc- 
ing new  gods  and  corrupting  the  youth  of  Athens,  as  meeting  Euthy- 
phron before  the  trial  takes  place,  and  discussing  with  him  the  meaning 
involved  in  a  charge  of  impiety  —  the  general  standpoint  of  the  time 
in  the  charge  against  Socrates  is  well  brought  out.  Socrates'  close 
questioning  at  last  drives  Euthyphron,  who  is  represented  as  learned 
in  the  subject,  to  the  statement :  "  This,  however,  I  tell  you  simply, 
that  if  any  one  knows  how  to  speak  and  to  do  things  grateful  to  the 
gods,  by  praying  and  sacrificing,  these  things  are  holy;  and  such 
things  preserve  both  private  homes  and  the  general  weal  of  cities;  but 
the  contraries  to  things  acceptable  to  them  are  impious,  which  also 
subvert  and  ruin  all  things."  This  was  undoubtedly  the  characteristic 
position  of  the  time  involved  in  the  charge  against  Socrates. 


vin  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          255 

deities,  on  whose  good-will  the  existing  temporal  wel- 
fare was  held  to  depend  that  was  always  feared. 
The  principle  underlying  all  such  acts  of  persecution 
may  indeed,  after  what  has  gone  before,  be  readily 
perceived.  They  are  all,  we  see,  directly  related  to 
the  fact  already  discussed  at  length,  namely,  that  the 
controlling  centre  of  the  evolutionary  process  is  still 
in  the  present.  The  conception  which  we  have  in- 
sisted on  as  characteristic  of  the  second  of  the  two 
great  stages  of  human  evolution — that  conception  in 
which  the  standpoint  is  that  the  interests  included 
in  what  is  called  spiritual  welfare  transcend  in  im- 
portance those  merely  temporal  in  nature  —  was 
altogether  absent. 

Now  directly  we  conceive  the  human  mind  to  have 
reached  the  standpoint  at  which  the  standard  is  set 
up  that  those  interests,  which  become  known  at  a 
later  stage  under  the  head  of  spiritual  welfare,  are 
actually  more  important  than  temporal  interests,  we 
are  confronted  with  a  position  of  altogether  peculiar 
interest.  To  all  appearance  we  have  reached  a  kind 
of  impass  in  human  evolution.  As  the  full  nature  of 
the  position  discloses  itself  on  reflection,  its  essential 
features  only  seem  to  stand  out  with  more  uncom- 
promising clearness.  We  seem,  in  the  evolution  of 
life,  to  have  travelled  to  the  brink  of  a  problem  to 
which  there  is  no  visible  solution  —  a  problem  which 
must,  beyond  doubt,  give  rise  to  a  class  of  phenomena 
entirely  new  and  quite  special  to  itself. 

The  outlines  of  the  situation  are  capable  of  being 
readily  grasped  by  the  mind.  They  may  be  pre- 
sented in  this  wise.  The  controlling  centre  of 
human  consciousness  has  hitherto  been,  as  we  have 


256  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

seen,  in  the  present  time.  But,  as  has  been  through- 
out insisted,  by  a  necessity  from  which  there  is  no 
escape,  and  which  is  inherent  in  the  very  nature  of 
the  evolutionary  process  itself,  this  controlling  centre 
is  sooner  or  later  destined  to  be  shifted  into  the 
future.  Yet  now,  as  the  concepts  accompanying  this 
transfer  begin  to  take  shape  in  the  human  mind ;  as  we 
actually  see  the  human  consciousness  clearly  defining 
to  itself  in  the  full  light  of  history  the  concept  that  the 
interests  which  it  has  come  to  include  under  the  head 
of  "spiritual,"  are  of  more  importance  than  its  tem- 
poral welfare ;  there  looms  out  before  us  an  issue 
more  far-reaching  and  more  complex  than  has  ever 
before  been  encountered. 

For,  if  the  human  mind  is  now  really  to  rise  to  the 
position  of  holding  with  absolute  conviction  that  the 
interests  which  it  defines  to  itself  as  spiritual  are 
more  important  than  its  temporal  welfare,  what  must 
happen  ?  To  all  appearance  there  is  involved  in  the 
very  nature  of  the  concept  through  which  such  a 
subordination  can  alone  be  effected,  a  principle  which 
must  again  imprison  all  human  activities  in  a  tyranny 
even  greater  than  any  from  which  they  have  just 
emerged.  In  the  past,  as  we  have  seen,  the  interests 
of  the  future  were  entirely  at  the  mercy  of  the  tyran- 
nies through  which  the  omnipotent  present  expressed 
itself.  But  now,  although  the  operation  of  Natural 
Selection  tends  to  be,  as  it  were,  projected  into  the 
future,  the  battle-ground,  it  must  be  remembered, 
remains,  and  must  forever  remain,  in  the  present 
time.  No  tyranny,  therefore,  within  which  the  pres- 
ent could  cramp  the  free  play  of  human  energies, 
could  ever  be  so  overwhelming  as  that  which  appears 


viil  THE  GREAT   ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE  257 

to  present  itself  as  lying  latent  and  involved  in  the 
concept  that  what  is  defined  as  spiritual  welfare  is  of 
more  importance  than  temporal  interests. 

Nay  more,  we  even  see  that  the  more  firmly  the 
conviction  is  held  by  the  human  mind,  that  what  is 
called  temporal  welfare  is  inferior  to  what  is  called 
spiritual  welfare,  the  more  overwhelming,  to  all  ap- 
pearance, must  the  new  tyranny  become.  In  the 
first  era  of  evolution  there  was  at  least  a  rivalry  of 
forms  through  which  the  present  expressed  itself. 
But  now,  if  it  is  to  be  actually  believed  that  temporal 
welfare  is  no  longer  to  be  compared  in  importance  to 
what  are  called  spiritual  interests ;  then  it  would 
appear  that  all  the  tyrannies  of  the  past  must  merge 
themselves  in  one.  In  art,  in  literature,  in  morals, 
in  the  State,  in  religion  itself,  when  we  stand  in  the 
presence  of  the  concept  that  the  present  is  no  longer 
of  the  first  importance,  there  can,  apparently,  never 
be  in  the  present  that  free  conflict  of  forces  out  of 
which  the  larger  future  can  alone  be  evolved.  A  new 
tyranny,  different  from  any  in  the  past,  must  appar- 
ently absorb  all  other  tyrannies,  and  must  in  the  end 
become  greater  than  them  all. 

Here  we  have  emerged  into  the  presence  of  the 
central  problem  which  begins  to  underlie  the  unfold- 
ing of  the  human  mind  in  our  civilisation.  No  other 
of  equal  interest  has  hitherto  presented  itself.  To 
its  definition  nearly  all  the  leading  events  of  the 
Middle  Ages  contribute  their  meaning.  Along  what 
lines  will  the  solution  begin  to  develop  itself?  Will 
that  free  play  of  forces  within  the  present,  which 
alone  can  emancipate  the  future,  out  of  which  the 
larger  future  can  alone  be  born,  and  towards  which 


258  WESTERN   CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  whole  process  of  human  development  appears  to 
have  moved,  remain,  after  all,  unachieved  ?  Are  the 
activities  of  the  human  will  really  destined  to  be  thus 
imprisoned  again  in  a  new  tyranny  ?  Is  the  human 
mind  in  the  end  —  beaten,  baffled,  disillusioned  — 
destined  to  retrace  its  steps,  and  to  abandon  the  con- 
viction that  what  it  has  come  to  call  its  spiritual 
interests  are  indeed  more  important  than  its  temporal 
interests  ?  Is  it  really  destined  to  return  again  to 
that  self-centred  standpoint  in  the  present  beyond 
which  the  world  appeared  to  have  moved  ?  Or  is  our 
Western  world,  beneath  it  all,  to  be  carried  forward 
by  forces  larger  than  it  wots  of  to  an  entirely  new 
synthesis  of  knowledge,  hidden  as  yet  from  view 
below  the  horizon  of  thought  ? 

As  the  evolutionist  looks  the  problem  here  defined 
in  the  face,  it  is  impossible  to  escape  a  sense  of  its 
containing  magnitude.  Our  whole  Western  world 
has  moved,  he  sees,  into  the  shadow  of  a  crisis  which 
must  gradually  engage  all  its  interests,  which  must 
pass  through  many  phases,  and  which  can  only 
develop  slowly  as  the  entire  range  of  the  world's 
activities  are  drawn  into  its  influence.  That  the 
human  mind  should  indeed  go  backward,  and,  revers- 
ing the  tendency  of  the  evolutionary  process,  should 
return  again  to  the  standpoint  of  the  epoch  out  of 
which  it  has  moved,  would  seem  hardly  possible.  For 
when  the  imagination,  with  such  an  alternative  before 
it,  travels  again  over  the  outlines  of  the  evolutionary 
process,  it  is  only  to  note  how  inherent  therein  appears 
to  be  the  principle  of  the  ultimate  shifting  of  the 
controlling  centre  of  human  consciousness  out  of  the 
present  time.  The  conviction  at  length  only  holds 


vin  THE   GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          259 

the  intellect  with  increased  strength  that  in  this  mat- 
ter the  human  mind  cannot  go  backward  again  even  if 
it  would.  Yet  wherein  lies  the  solution  ?  How  is  the 
race  to  rise  to  a  sense  of  direct,  personal,  and  compell- 
ing responsibility  to  a  principle  cosmic  in  its  reach 
—  to  a  principle  which  must  of  necessity  transcend 
every  power  and  purpose  included  within  the  limits  of 
political  consciousness  —  and  yet  be  so  occupied  with 
its  present  as  to  set  free  therein  the  play  of  its  highest 
powers  ?  How  are  we  to  witness  the  controlling 
principles  of  human  consciousness  projected  out  of 
the  present ;  and  yet  see  opened  within  the  present 
that  untrammelled  play  of  all  human  powers  and 
activities  which  alone  can  emancipate  the  future,  that 
unrestricted  rivalry  of  all  human  energies  such  as 
has  never  been  in  the  world  before,  and  towards 
which  the  whole  process  of  evolution  seems  to  have 
moved  ? 

This  is  the  problem  to  which  our  Western  civilisa- 
tion has  to  address  itself.  It  is  the  problem  in  the 
solution  of  which  there  becomes  visible  in  time  a  dif- 
ference destined  at  length  to  divide  by  a  clear  line  of 
demarcation,  never  again  to  be  crossed,  the  meaning 
underlying  the  sum  of  all  Western  things  from  the 
ultimate  significance  underlying  all  other  forms  and 
phases  whatever  through  which  human  activities 
have  come  to  express  themselves.  It  is  the  problem 
which,  in  the  method  of  its  attempted  solution,  begins 
in  time,  even  in  our  Western  world,  to  differentiate, 
as  by  an  invisible  line  projected  into  the  future,  be- 
tween the  living  and  the  dead,  between  the  peoples 
whose  work  no  longer  belongs  to  the  future,  and  those 
through  whose  activities  and  ideals  it  becomes  the 


260  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

destiny  of  the  race  to  see  the  main  current  of  the 
world's  history  descend  towards  the  ages  to  come. 

As  we  turn  now  and  watch  the  unfolding  of  this 
development  in  Western  history,  we  may  observe 
how  predestined,  as  it  were,  by  inherent  necessity 
are  the  lines  upon  which  it  begins  to  move.  To 
every  student  who  has  endeavoured  to  thoroughly 
master  any  section  of  European  history  comprised 
in  the  Middle  Ages  there  must  come,  at  some  stage 
of  his  work,  the  same  experience.  As  soon  as  he 
has  got  deeply  into  his  subject  he  begins  to  be  pos- 
sessed, to  an  ever-increasing  degree,  with  a  sense 
of  the  limitations  under  which  he  must  labour  — 
however  well  equipped  he  may  be  in  every  other 
respect  —  if  he  endeavours  to  understand  the  section 
before  him  apart  from  the  larger  organic  process 
which  is  proceeding  beneath  the  face  of  Western 
history.  It  matters  not  in  what  department  of  polit- 
ical or  of  social  development,  or  even  in  the  history  of 
what  country,  the  study  is  pursued.  When  progress 
has  been  made  up  to  a  certain  point,  the  intellect 
always  becomes  conscious  of  the  same  want.  It 
reaches  out  towards  the  comprehension  of  those 
larger  principles  which  are  evidently  controlling  the 
life-process  as  a  whole  which  is  at  work  beneath  the 
outward  face  of  our  civilisation. 

If  we  take  up,  for  instance,  in  the  present  day,  in 
England  that  series  of  State  charters,  of  economic 
monographs,  and  of  original  public  and  other  docu- 
ments from  which  the  historian  of  the  social  or  of 
the  constitutional  development  of  England  during 
the  Middle  Ages  has  endeavoured  to  work,  we  feel 
at  once,  when  we  have  got  to  the  heart  of  the  sub- 


vni  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          26l 

ject,  that  in  all  these  we  are  but  in  touch  with  the 
outward  phenomena  of  a  system  of  life  of  which  the 
real  meaning  lies  elsewhere.  The  particulars,  for 
instance,  of  the  development  in  England  under  ex- 
ceptional conditions  of  the  ideas  and  customs  of 
certain  German  tribes  ;  of  the  local  modifications  of 
the  feudal  system  ;  of  the  operation  of  conflicting 
racial  characteristics  and  institutions  ;  of  the  result- 
ing interaction  in  circumstances  special  and  local  in 
England  of  the  various  claims  and  powers  of  the 
nobles,  the  people,  and  the  king;  —  are  all  of  great 
interest  and  importance.  Nevertheless,  what  we  feel 
is  that  the  real  meaning  of  the  forces  which  are 
making  the  history  of  our  civilisation,  and,  there- 
fore, the  real  meaning  of  the  forces  which  are  after- 
wards to  express  themselves  in  the  problems  for  which 
the  history  of  England  is  to  stand  in  the  future,  is 
not,  in  the  last  resort,  comprised  in  these  things. 
There  is,  it  may  be  perceived,  no  characteristic  cause 
or  principle  in  any  one  of  them,  or  in  all  of  them 
together,  which  could  serve  in  itself  to  differentiate, 
in  any  important  particular,  the  world  in  the  future 
from  the  world  as  it  has  always  been  in  the  past.1 
It  is  only  as  they  are  to  contribute  to  the  develop- 
ment of  a  higher  system  of  life  that  they  are  later 
to  become  instinct  with  meaning  and  significance. 
It  is  therefore  towards  the  principles  of  a  larger 
order  of  life  than  these  things  by  themselves  imply, 
a  system  of  life  the  pulsations  of  which  may  already 
be  distinguished  even  beneath  the  clauses  of  Magna 
Charta,  that  the  intellect  goes  out.  It  is  the  mean- 
ing of  that  central  problem  in  the  unfolding  of  the 

1  Cf.  The  Holy  Roman  Empire,  by  James  Bryce,  p.  242. 


262  WESTERN   CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

human  mind  now  beginning  to  define  itself  in  West- 
ern history  that  holds  the  attention  —  that  problem 
of  which  we  catch  sight  in  the  history  of  England 
in  the  ordinance  of  William  I.  dividing  the  secular 
from  the  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction;1  in  the  struggle 
between  the  king  of  England  and  Becket,  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury ;  in  the  causes  which  produced 
the  Constitutions  of  Clarendon  ;  in  the  drama  being 
enacted  as  a  king  of  England  receives  his  kingdom 
as  a  fief  from  the  see  of  Rome ;  in  the  long  conflict 
over  investiture  ;  in  the  statute  of  mortmain  ; 2  and 
in  the  Bull  of  Clericis  Laicos.3  It  is  the  unfolding 
of  the  problem  in  human  development  represented 
in  the  process  of  life  from  which  these  events  begin 
to  proceed  that  is  about  to  control  the  course  of 
history  in  England,  as  in  Western  Europe  during 
the  centuries  which  are  to  come. 

When  we  turn  to  follow  this  system  of  life  to  its 
centre  on  the  continent  of  Europe  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  it  may  be  observed  that  the  character  of  the 
problem  underlying  the  development  of  the  Western 
world  has  already  progressed  towards  definition. 
The  new  system  of  belief  that  we  saw  in  the  last 
chapter  undermining  the  foundations  upon  which 
the  ancient  State  had  rested,  and  which,  through 
its  action  in  projecting  the  controlling  principles  of 
human  consciousness  out  of  the  present,  we  saw 
apparently  destined  to  dissolve  all  those  tyrannies 
through  which  the  present  had  hitherto  expressed 

1  Stubbs'  Select  Charters,  p.  85,  and  Henderson's  Select  Historical 
Documents  of  the  Afiddle  Ages,  p.  9. 

2  Select  Charters,  vii.  v. ;   Select  Documents,  i.  viii. 
8  Select  Documents,  iv.  vi. 


viii  THE   GREAT   ANTINOMY:    FIRST  STAGE          263 

itself,  has  gradually  moved  with  the  centuries  to- 
wards an  ideal  which  has  begun  to  hold  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  world. 

There  is  no  more  striking  spectacle  in  history, 
when  we  are  able  to  appreciate  its  meaning,  than 
that  presented  by  the  human  mind  during  the  first 
thirteen  centuries  of  our  era,  when  —  in  the  midst  of 
the  races  in  whom  a  world-process  of  military  selec- 
tion has  culminated,  and  with  all  the  instincts,  the 
passions,  and  the  ideals  of  an  epoch  of  military 
stress  of  unimagined  length  still  close  behind  it  — 
we  see  it  slowly  passing  under  the  influence  of  the 
greatest  evolutionary  principle  to  which  life  has 
yet  been  subjected ;  when,  with  as  yet  no  clear 
idea  of  the  nature  of  the  vortex  into  which  its 
activities  are  being  drawn,  we  see  it  struggling  with 
the  phenomena  which  successively  arise  as  this 
evolutionary  principle  gradually  impinges  on  the 
whole  life  of  these  military  races  in  our  Western 
world  through  the  medium  of  a  single  idea  —  the 
concept  that  the  welfare  which  has  now  come  to  be 
described  as  spiritual  is  more  important  than  its  tem- 
poral interests.  To  understand  the  spectacle  pre- 
sented by  our  civilisation  during  this  period  we 
must,  as  far  as  possible,  detach  our  standpoint  from 
all  the  conditions  of  time  and  place.  Centuries, 
countries,  peoples,  races,  nationalities,  throughout 
this  period  in  Europe,  all  present  the  same  face  to 
us.  It  is  the  same  problem  with  which  they  are  all 
struggling.  It  is  towards  the  same  culminating 
crisis  of  the  first  phase  of  the  problem  with  which 
the  human  mind  has  now  become  confronted  that 
all  the  tendencies  of  European  history  are  hastening. 


264  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

To  bring  clearly  before  the  mind  the  full  outlines 
of  the  problem  involved  in  the  conflict  between  the 
temporal  and  spiritual  power  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
as  the  prolonged  struggle  between  the  Emperor  and 
the  Pope  —  which  may  be  taken  as  representative  of 
all  minor  and  local  phases  of  the  conflict  —  becomes 
the  life-centre  of  Western  history  in  the  eleventh, 
twelfth,  and  thirteenth  centuries,  it  is  necessary  to 
carry  the  mind  back  over  the  conditions  in  which 
the  problem  begins  to  define  itself,  and  through 
which  it  gradually  rises  towards  its  climax. 

As  we  first  catch  sight,  in  the  writings  of  the 
early  Fathers  of  the  new  religion,  of  the  influence  of 
the  concept  that  the  welfare  that  had  now  come  to 
be  described  as  spiritual  was  of  more  importance 
than  temporal  interests,  the  effect  on  the  mind  of 
the  individual  is  perceived  to  have  been  direct  and 
unmistakable.  There  was  inculcated  through  the 
influence  of  the  new  concept  a  contempt  for  wealth 
and  power,  and  all  that  the  world  had  to  offer.  The 
renunciation  of  the  satisfaction  of  all  the  desires  and 
passions,  for  which  men  had  hitherto  lived,  was  the 
ideal  which  was  held  before  the  mind ;  and  the  sub- 
jection of  the  body,  the  stamping  on  its  passions, 
appetites,  and  very  wants,  grew  accordingly  into  the 
mortifying  rigours  of  hermits  and  anchorites,  into  the 
sufferings  of  almost  inconceivably  enduring  pillar- 
saints,  and  at  last,  in  the  early  centuries  of  our  era, 
into  all  the  aims  and  ideals  of  a  world-embracing 
asceticism. 

All  this  represented,  however,  but  the  subjective 
effect  on  the  individual  mind  of  the  concept  at  the 
outset.  It  is  as  the  spirit,  which  lies  behind  these 


vm  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          265 

purely  subjective  phenomena,  moves  towards  its 
objective  realisation  in  the  outward  organisation  of 
the  world  that  there  becomes  visible  the  ideal  which 
was  latent  therein,  and  towards  the  realisation  of 
which  all  the  events  of  Western  history  now  begin 
to  slowly  gravitate. 

The  first  question  as  regards  the  outward  world 
to  suggest  itself  under  the  influence  of  the  new 
concept  must  have  sprung  almost  spontaneously  to 
the  mind.  If  now,  indeed,  spiritual  welfare  is  of 
more  importance  than  temporal  interests,  what  then, 
it  must  have  been  asked,  is  to  be  the  meaning  of 
this  world  with  which  men  are  occupied  ?  what  is  to 
be  the  character  of  the  ends  to  which  men  are 
collectively  to  direct  it  by  their  activities  therein  ? 
When  such  a  question  was  asked  in  the  days  when 
the  new  belief  was  as  yet  struggling  for  its  life,  for  a 
foothold,  for  bare  tolerance  in  the  world,  men  were 
satisfied  to  turn  inward  rather  than  outward  for  an 
answer.  But  as  the  new  belief  gradually  extended 
its  sway  over  the  State ;  as  it  gratefully  accepted, 
at  first  the  countenance,  and  then  the  support  of  the 
civil  power ;  as  it  at  last,  through  the  help  of  the 
latter,  gradually  extended  its  conquest,  not  simply 
over  the  Roman  world,  but  over  the  minds  of  the 
incoming  peoples  of  Western,  of  Northern,  and  of 
Eastern  Europe;  —  a  new  answer  began  to  silently 
shape  itself  behind  the  events  of  history. 

For  now,  men  must  have  argued,  if  the  State  was 
indeed  no  longer  pagan,  but  converted  to  the  doc- 
trines and  ideals  of  the  new  belief,  then  surely  it 
must  become  the  highest  object  of  the  State  to  have 
its  powers  and  interests  directed  to  fulfil  the  greater 


266  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

ends  to  which  men  had  come  to  hold  allegiance.  It 
must  be  the  desire,  nay,  it  must  be  the  highest  and 
imperative  duty  of  the  State  to  fulfil  the  office  of 
guardian,  of  regulator,  of  champion  of  the  spiritual 
interests  which  were  now  placed  above  the  end  of 
temporal  welfare. 

Slowly,  therefore,  as  the  world  was  caught  in  the 
toil  of  forces  inherent  in  the  new  concept,  we  see  it 
being  carried  irresistibly  forward  in  a  direction  al- 
ready determined  by  inherent  necessity. 

At  an  early  period  after  the  outward  conversion 
of  the  State,  we  see,  accordingly,  the  emperors 
claiming,  in  the  name  of  the  State  regarded  as  the 
highest  embodiment  of  the  new  religion,  to  exercise 
the  highest  authority  in  all  religious  matters.  We 
have  the  spectacle  of  Constantius  attempting  to 
impose  Arianism  on  the  empire.  We  see  the  em- 
peror for  the  time  being  deciding  the  issues  in  con- 
flicts of  religious  opinion.  We  have  the  spectacle 
of  Zeno,  Justinian,  and  Heraclius,  Leo  the  Isaurian, 
and  Constantine  the  Fifth,1  each  claiming  to  inter- 
fere in  religious  controversy,  and  to  direct  and  in- 
terpret by  imperial  authority  the  doctrines  and 
interests  of  the  Church. 

But  it  is  when  we  turn  to  Western  Europe  that 
we  see  the  world  becoming  gradually  and  steadily 
enveloped  in  the  influence  of  a  single  all-embracing 
idea.  As  the  spread  of  the  new  belief  amongst  the 
peoples  of  Western  and  Northern  Europe  rises 
towards  the  central  events  of  the  Middle  Ages,2 

1  Cf.  History  of  the  Later  Roman  Empire,  by  J.  B.  Bury,  vol.  ii. 
vi.  vi. 

2  Cf.   The  Holy  Roman  Empire,  by  James  Bryce,  chap.  v. 


vin  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          267 

namely,  the  alliance  of  the  see  of  Rome  with  the 
temporal  power  of  the  incoming  races  of  the  North 
—  signalised  at  last  in  the  historic  spectacle  of  the 
crowning  by  the  Pope  in  the  year  800  of  Charle- 
magne as  the  successor  in  men's  minds  of  the 
Roman  emperors  of  the  West  —  we  have  in  reality 
but  one  controlling  principle  developing  beneath  all 
the  events  of  Western  history. 

To  perceive  the  significance  of  the  central  prob- 
lem of  the  Middle  Ages,  it  is  necessary  for  the 
evolutionist  to  keep  steadily  in  view  the  principal 
political  symbol  in  Western  history  for  nearly  a 
thousand  years  ;  namely,  that  of  the  Holy  Roman  Em- 
pire, which  may  be  said  to  have  been  begun  with  the 
crowning  of  Charlemagne  in  the  year  800,  though 
more  formally  with  the  accession  of  Otto  I.  in  962, 
and  to  have  lasted  down  to  1806.  In  the  image  which 
the  empire  represented  in  the  period  of  its  highest 
development  the  underlying  conception  was  that  of 
a  universal  State,  the  Pope  representing  the  spiritual 
head  and  the  Emperor  the  temporal  head ;  both 
possessing  universal  jurisdiction  over  Christendom. 
From  the  popular  identification  of  the  empire  with 
the  history  of  mediaeval  Germany,  it  is  sometimes 
overlooked  how  near  this  ideal  often  was  to  actual 
realisation  in  Western  history.  In  it,  as  Mr.  Bryce 
has  remarked,  the  world's  highest  dignity  remained 
for  many  centuries  in  Europe  the  only  civil  office  to 
which  any  free-born  Christian  was  legally  eligible.1 
Even  the  rulers  of  States  claiming  virtual  indepen- 
dence of  the  empire  in  most  cases  admitted  the 
superior  rank  of  the  Emperor.  For  the  office  of 

1  The  Holy  Roman  Empire,  chap.  xxi. 


268  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

Emperor  the  competition  was  often  international, 
not  only  princes  of  German,  but  of  Italian,  French, 
Spanish,  and  English  nationality  being  from  time  to 
time  amongst  the  candidates.  And  when  the  dig- 
nity of  emperor  was  united  with  the  powers  of  a 
reigning  prince  of  first  rank  outside  of  Germany 
—  as  when  the  ruler  in  Spain,  Naples,  the  Nether- 
lands, and  other  dominions  became  the  Emperor 
Charles  V.,  after  an  election  in  which  Francis  I.  of 
France  and  Henry  VIII.  of  England  had  been  his 
competitors  —  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  was  in  fact 
as  well  as  in  theory  the  principal  symbol  of  universal 
politics  in  Western  history. 

Now  as  the  evolutionist  turns  over  at  the  present 
day  the  surviving  records  of  this  institution  as  it  first 
becomes  visible  in  Europe,  nothing  can  be  more 
clearly  revealed  than  the  nature  of  the  position,  as 
disclosed  on  almost  every  page,  up  to  which  the 
human  mind  had  travelled  at  this  point  in  the  history 
of  our  civilisation.  Nothing  can  also  be  clearer  than 
the  nature  of  the  climax  towards  which  it  was  being 
carried  irresistibly  forward.  As  he  takes  up,  for  in- 
stance, that  remarkable  document  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
the  Capitulary  of  the  year  8O2,1  correctly  described  as 
the  foundation  charter  of  the  empire,  the  standpoint 
which  underlies  the  working  of  the  human  mind  is 
apparent  in  nearly  every  clause.  The  concept  that 
the  spiritual  welfare  of  the  world  is  of  more  impor- 
tance than  its  temporal  interests  being  accepted  as 
unquestioned,  there  follows  a  series  of  steps,  each  to 
all  appearance  natural  and  inevitable,  but  to  which 
all  the  controlling  events  in  the  history  of  Western 

1  Henderson's  Select  Historical  Documents  of  the  Middle  Ages,  ii.  ii. 


via  THE   GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST  STAGE          269 

civilisation  for  centuries  in  the  future  are  about  to 
become  related. 

The  highest  embodiment  of  human  interests  and 
activities  in  the  world  being  the  State,  it  is  taken  by 
Charlemagne  simply  as  a  self-evident  truth  that  the 
State  should  be  directed  towards  the  realisation  of  the 
ideal  of  the  spiritual  welfare  of  the  world.  The  high- 
est representative  of  the  power  of  the  State  being  the 
Emperor,  the  next  step  follows,  apparently,  with  the 
same  inherent  inevitableness.  We  have  in  the  Capitu- 
lary, accordingly,  the  spectacle  of  the  Emperor  conceiv- 
ing himself  as  standing  not  simply  as  the  head  of  the 
political  organisation,  and  as  the  impersonification  of 
military  power  and  civil  justice ;  but  as  placed  at  the 
head  of  all  morality  and  religion,  to  hold  in  his  hands  the 
interests  of  morality,  of  doctrine,  and  of  the  Church  ; 
even  to  the  extent  of  charging  himself,  in  the  last 
resort,  with  the  rule  and  ordering  of  the  clergy.1 

Now  as  the  evolutionist  looks  closely  at  the  position 
here  defined,  the  remarkable  features  which  are  in- 
herent in  it  may  be  readily  distinguished.  It  will  be 
remembered  that  the  inquiry  which  has  been  hitherto 
followed  led  us  up  to  the  conclusion  that  the  essential 
characteristic  of  that  epoch  of  evolution  upon  which 
the  world  entered  when  it  passed  out  of  the  era  of  the 
ancient  civilisations,  in  which  a  rule  of  law  and  a  rule 
of  religion  had  been  one  and  identical,2  consisted  in 
the  fact  that  there  had  been  opened  in  the  human 
mind  an  antithesis,  the  evolutionary  significance  of 
which  springs  from  the  principle  that  it  is  not  capable 
of  being  again  bridged  in  any  equilibrium  within  the 

1  Cf.  Select  Historical  Documents  of  the  Middle  Ages,  ii.  ii. 
8  Cf.  Maine's  Ancient  Law,  p.  23. 


2/0  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

horizon  of  the  present,  nor  within  any  boundaries  of 
political  consciousness,  however  widely  conceived. 
Yet  what  we  now  appear  to  have  in  sight  in  this  -Ca- 
pitulary of  Charlemagne  is  the  spectacle  of  the  world 
already  moving,  as  it  were,  within  a  closed  circle  in 
the  State  towards  an  ideal,  the  effect  of  which  must  be, 
to  all  appearance,  to  actually  bring  the  world  back  again 
to  the  stage  described  by  Maine,  when  a  rule  of  religion 
and  a  rule  of  law  will  be  once  more  one  and  identical. 

We  have  in  sight,  in  short,  in  the  climax  towards 
which  the  events  of  history  appear  to  be  carrying  us, 
the  endeavour  of  the  world  to  express  once  more  in 
a  political  ideal  in  which  a  rule  of  religion  necessarily 
tends  to  become  again  coincident  with  a  rule  of  law,  a 
concept  the  meaning  and  potentiality  of  which  is  abso- 
lutely irreconcilable  with  such  an  ideal.  For,  if  we  have 
been  right  so  far,  the  new  concept  is  one  from  which 
there  must  proceed,  as  its  most  profoundly  significant 
evolutionary  result,  a  fundamental  and  characteristic 
distinction,  ever  widening  as  human  development 
continues,  between  the  whole  sphere  of  civil  and 
political  law  (of  which  the  characteristic  is  that  it 
remains  limited  by  the  horizon  of  the  State),  and  the 
whole  sphere  of  ethics  and  religion  (of  which  the  char- 
acteristic is  that  it  has  now  come  to  be  related  to 
principles  the  meaning  and  operation  of  which  tran- 
scend the  limits  of  political  consciousness). 

As  we  regard  the  situation  attentively,  the  nature 
of  the  central  position  upon  which  the  human  mind 
is  slowly  converging  grows  into  definition.  We  have 
actually  in  view,  we  perceive,  all  the  steps  by  which 
it  is  about  to  reach  the  climax  of  that  crisis  which 
we  saw  foreshadowed  at  the  beginning  of  the  chapter ; 


viii  THE  GREAT   ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          2/1 

as  the  concept,  by  which  the  controlling  principles 
of  human  consciousness  begin  to  be  projected  out  of 
the  present  time,  rises  into  ascendency  in  the  world. 
That  the  resulting  conditions  are  destined  to  ripen 
towards  a  crisis  of  capital  importance,  and  that  they 
must,  as  already  indicated,  give  rise  to  a  class  of 
phenomena  entirely  new  and  special,  is  already  clear. 
When,  therefore,  from  the  eleventh  century  onward 
to  the  sixteenth  we  regard  the  history  of  any  country 
in  Western  Europe,  the  phenomenon  which  has  been 
already  noted  as  characteristic  of  the  history  of  Eng- 
land is  immediately  apparent.  At  whatever  point  the 
historical  student  stands  in  Europe  his  face  during 
these  centuries  turns  towards  the  same  centre.  It  is 
the  great  problem  in  human  development,  becoming 
visible  as  the  claims,  inherent  in  the  very  nature  of 
the  concept  we  have  been  discussing,  grow  more  and 
more  clearly  into  view,  and  are  at  length  uncompro- 
misingly formulated  by  the  human  mind,  which  under- 
lies all  the  political  life  of  our  Western  world.  It 
matters  not  in  what  country  the  point  of  view  of  the 
student  is  taken  ;  the  position  in  the  State  is  found 
to  be  everywhere  the  same  ;  until  at  length,  as  we 
approach  the  period  embraced  in  the  thirteenth  and 
fourteenth  centuries,  only  one  great  question,  to  use 
words  of  Sir  Frederick  Pollock,1  "  draws  to  itself 
whatever  power  or  interest  men's  minds  then  had  in 
the  theoretical  treatment  of  affairs  of  State."  This 
is  the  controversy  between  the  temporal  and  the 
spiritual  power.2 

1  History  of  the  Science  of  Politics,  p.  34. 

2  In  regarding  the  capital  position  towards  which  this  controversy 
ripens,  the  evolutionist  soon  understands  that  one  of  the  first  things  he 


2/2  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

In  following  this  controversy  through  its  first  phase 
we  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  main  fact  behind  it, 
namely,  that  the  conflict  between  the  representatives 
of  the  civil  and  of  the  spiritual  power  in  the  Middle 
Ages  is  but  preliminary.  It  decided  who  was  to  be 
the  ultimate  authority  in  directing  the  State  towards 
a  certain  ideal.  But  the  great  and  supreme  problem 
for  which  the  principal  attention  of  the  evolutionist 
must  be  reserved  from  the  outset  is  the  ideal  itself  — 
that  to  which  the  human  mind  advances  through  this 
conflict  to  reach  the  ultimate  climax  beyond,  in  which 
a  rule  of  religion  and  a  rule  of  law  become  again  prac- 
tically one  and  coincident  in  our  civilisation. 

The  long-drawn-out  controversy  between  the  spir- 
itual power  and  the  temporal  power,  in  the  persons  of 
the  Pope  and  the  Emperor,  begins  in  its  acute  phase 
soon  after  the  accession  of  Pope  Gregory  VII.  in 
1073  ;  and  in  the  resulting  movement  it  may  be  said 
to  carry  us  down  into  the  midst  of  the  crisis  known 
in  history  as  the  Reformation.  In  regarding  this 

has  to  realise  is,  that  he  must  not  allow  his  attention  to  be  primarily 
concerned  with  those  causes,  often  necessarily  of  the  deepest  interest 
to  a  certain  class  of  students,  which  led  to  the  see  of  Rome  becoming 
the  representative  of  the  claims  now  put  forward.  For  as  the  intellect 
is  fixed  on  the  matter  which  claims  its  principal  attention,  namely,  the 
nature  of  the  central  position  towards  which  the  human  mind  is  devel- 
oping, what  it  soon  distinguishes  is  that  the  claims  formulated  by  suc- 
cessive Popes  were,  in  the  prevailing  conditions  of  the  world,  inherent 
in  the  concept  associated  with  our  developing  civilisation  ;  that  these 
claims  must  at  a  certain  stage  of  development  have  defined  themselves, 
and  have  been  enunciated  on  behalf  of  the  spiritual  authority  just  as  we 
find  them  here  being  enunciated.  They  are,  indeed,  to  be  distinguished 
long  after  inherent  in  the  concepts  of  Churches  and  parties  which  had 
never  acknowledged,  or  which  had  ceased  to  acknowledge,  the  authority 
of  Rome. 


vra  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST  STAGE         2/3 

controversy  it  is  necessary  to  keep  always  clearly  be- 
fore the  mind,  that  throughout  the  entire  history  of 
the  presentation  of  the  claims  put  forward  by  both 
sides  there  runs  the  dominant  influence  of  one  princi- 
ple which  is  implicitly  accepted  by  each  side  alike ; 
namely,  the  conception  —  now  clearly  applied  in  the- 
ory to  politics  on  a  universal  scale  —  that  what  is 
described  as  the  spiritual  welfare  of  the  world  is  of 
more  importance  than  any  interest  which  is  comprised 
merely  within  the  limits  of  political  consciousness. 
The  conclusion  which  men  saw  apparently  involved 
in,  and  proceeding  inevitably  from  the  acceptance  of 
this  concept  was,  that  the  State  should  be  directed 
towards  the  realisation  of  the  spiritual  welfare  of  the 
world.  The  point  at  which  the  controversy  begins  to 
arise  is,  therefore,  in  the  formulation  of  an  answer  to 
the  question :  Who  is  ultimately  the  supreme  au- 
thority in  directing  the  State  towards  this  end?1 

As  the  dispute  opens  between  Gregory  VII.  and 
the  Emperor  Henry  IV.,  we  see,  as  soon  as  we  under- 
stand the  existing  conditions  of  the  world,  and  the 
nature  of  the  concept  common  to  both  sides,  how 
predestined  are  the  lines  along  which  it  must  proceed, 
and  how  impossible  from  the  outset  was  the  position 

1  The  world  saw  only  two  answers  to  this  question.  Either  Emperor 
or  Pope  —  either  the  civil  or  religious  ruler.  But  the  mind  of  the  evo- 
lutionist continues  to  be  concentrated  on  the  problem  which  stands 
behind  either  answer  —  the  supreme  problem  of  our  developing  civil- 
isation. For  with  either  answer  the  development  of  the  human  mind 
appears  to  have  become  involved  in  the  closed  circle  already  referred 
to.  With  development  along  either  line  the  world  must  to  all  appear- 
ance be  carried  back  again  to  the  condition  of  that  earlier  stage  de- 
scribed by  Maine  when  a  rule  of  religion  is  identical  with  a  rule  of  law, 
when  the  breach  of  a  religious  ordinance  will  be  punished  again  by 
civil  penalties. 
T 


2/4  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

taken  up  by  the  representative  of  the  civil  power  as 
against  the  claims  of  the  representative  of  the  spirit- 
ual authority. 

That  ideal  of  the  State  which  Henry  IV.  and  his 
successors  represented,  which  at  the  time  underlay 
the  claims  of  the  temporal  power  throughout  the 
whole  of  Western  Europe,  and  which  still  lingers  in 
certain  quarters  in  our  civilisation  as  a  legitimate  con- 
ception, was  that  which  we  have  already  seen  outlined 
in  Charlemagne's  Capitulary  of  8O2.1  It  was  that  in 
which  the  sovereign  of  the  State  was  concerned  as 
standing  not  simply  at  the  head  of  the  civil  and  mili- 
tary power,  but  at  the  head  of  morality,  of  religion, 
and  of  the  Church.  The  nature  of  the  controversy 
in  its  opening  terms  as  regards  the  empire  is  well 
defined  by  Sir  Frederick  Pollock  :  "  It  was  the  com- 
mon ground  of  the  disputants  that  the  papacy  and 
the  empire  were  both  divinely  ordained,  and  each  in 
its  own  sphere  had  universal  jurisdiction  over  Christ- 
endom. The  point  of  difference  was  as  to  the  relation 
of  these  two  jurisdictions  to  one  another.  Was  the 
temporal  ruler  in  the  last  resort  subordinate  to  the 
spiritual,  as  the  lesser  to  the  greater  light  ?  or  were 
their  dignities  co-ordinate  and  equal  ? "  2  Or  was  the 
temporal  ruler  —  as  Frederick  II.  afterwards  aimed  at 
making  himself  —  actually  "supreme  in  spiritual  as 
well  as  temporal  government  ? "  3 

This  was  the  outline  of  the  controversy  at  the  be- 
ginning. As  we  look  at  it  now,  we  see  that  from  the 
outset  there  could  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  issue  which 
must  be  reached.  Once  the  human  mind,  in  the  ex- 

1  Select  Historical  Documents  of  the  Middle  Ages,  ii.  ii. 

2  History  of  the  Science  of  Politics,  p.  34.  8  Ibid. 


vin  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          275 

isting  conditions  of  the  world,  had  accepted  the  posi- 
tion involved  in  the  concept  that  its  spiritual  welfare 
was  of  more  importance  than  its  temporal  interests, 
the  advance  to  the  position  which  was  soon  to  be 
reached  was  to  all  appearance  inevitable. 

As  accordingly  that  conception  of  the  greatness  of 
the  spiritual  authority,  which  had  dawned  on  the 
imagination  of  the  monks  of  Cluny,  begins  to  be  em- 
bodied in  the  claims  of  the  papal  power,  the  lines 
along  which  the  development  proceeds  follow  an  in- 
evitable course.  The  first  matter  in  which  issue  is 
joined  is  that  of  lay  investiture,  in  which  the  position 
on  either  side  had  become  already  well  defined.  It  is 
necessary  to  remember  that  in  that  political  ideal, 
which  had  now  become  general  throughout  Western 
Europe,  in  which  the  head  of  the  State,  following 
Charlemagne's  ideal,  was  conceived  as  the  ultimate 
authority  alike  in  matters  of  temporal  and  of  the  spir- 
itual power,  the  choice  of  the  bishops  of  the  Church 
was  in  practice  made  by  the  head  of  the  State.  With 
the  development  of  the  feudal  system  there  had  arisen 
a  natural  consequence.  A  bishop  had  now  become 
not  only  a  dignitary  of  the  Church,  but  also  a  prince 
of  the  realm,  whose  duty  it  was  to  send  contingents  to 
the  king's  army  and  also  to  act  as  councillor  at  his 
court.  Half  the  land  and  wealth  of  Germany  is  said 
to  have  thus  passed  into  the  hands  of  bishops  and  ab- 
bots of  the  Church.1  As  we  had  one  side  of  Charle- 
magne's ideal  of  the  Civitas  Dei  in  the  fact  that  it  is 
recorded  that  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  States  after  conver- 
sion thirty  queens  and  kings  went  into  the  cloister ;  a 

1  The  Holy  Roman  Empire,  by  James  Bryce,  c.  x. 

2  Civilisation  during  the  Middle  Ages,  by  G.  B.  Adams,  c.  xi. 


276  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

so  we  had  now  the  other  side  of  the  development  in 
the  fact,  that  we  are  told  that  within  thirty  years, 
towards  the  close  of  the  ninth  century,  two  arch- 
bishops and  eight  bishops  died  on  the  field  of  battle 
fighting  by  the  side  of  counts  and  lords.1  The  result 
which  followed  was  inevitable.  The  fiefs  and  juris- 
dictions of  the  bishoprics  came,  therefore,  to  be  given 
by  the  head  of  the  State  to  faithful  followers  ;  and  not 
only  as  a  reward  for  their  past  services,  but  also  in 
consideration  of  those  in  the  future.2 

It  was  against  the  subordination  of  the  conception 
of  the  spiritual  power  which  all  this  essentially  im- 
plied, and  against  the  practice  of  lay  investiture  which 
it  immediately  involved,  that  the  genius  and  imagina- 
tion of  Pope  Gregory  VII.  now  rose  in  revolt. 

In  the  resulting  conflict,  in  which  the  political  life 
of  the  whole  of  Western  Europe  becomes  deeply 
involved,  the  steps  follow  each  other  with  dramatic 
effect.  In  the  opening  act  we  have  five  of  Henry 
IV's  councillors  excommunicated  by  Gregory  for  hav- 
ing attained  ecclesiastical  office  by  means  of  simony,3 

1  The  Beginning  of  the  Middle  Ages,  by  R.  W.  Church,  c.  x. 

*  Select  Historical  Documents  of  the  Middle  Ages,  by  E.  F.  Hender- 
son, iv.  Intro. 

*  Adams  gives  the  following  description  of  the  charge  of  simony  at 
this  period  :  Technically,  it  involved  "  securing  an  ecclesiastical  office 
by  bribery,  named  from  the  incident  recorded  in  the  eighth  chapter  of 
the  Acts  concerning  Simon  Magus.     But  at  this  time  the  desire  for  the 
complete  independence  of  the  Church  had  given  to  it  a  new  and  wider 
meaning,  which  made  it  include  all  appointment  to  positions  in  the 
Church  by  laymen,  including  kings  and  the  Emperor.    It  is  the  plainest 
of  historical  facts  that   such   appointment   had  gone   on,  practically 
undisputed,  from  the  earliest  times.     Under  both  the  public  and  the 
private  law  of  all  the  German  States  the  king  had  such  a  right.   Accord- 
ing to  the  private  law  the  founder  was  the  patron,  and  as  such  enjoyed 
the  right  of  appointment.     According  to  the  conception  of  the  public 


VIII  THE  GREAT   ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          2/7 

and  Henry  is  ordered  to  desist  from  exercising  any 
further  influence  on  episcopal  elections.  The  Em- 
peror,1 true  to  that  conception  of  his  office  as  head 
not  only  of  the  State  but  of  the  spiritual  power,  pro- 
ceeded, in  reply,  to  summon  a  council  at  Worms, 
which  was  attended  by  two  of  the  archbishops  and 
two-thirds  of  all  the  bishops  of  Germany.  "Thou  hast 
not  shunned  to  rise  up  against  the  royal  power  con- 
ferred upon  us  by  God,  daring  to  threaten  to  divest 
us  of  it,"2  said  Henry  in  his  letter  to  the  Pope,  "as  if 
we  had  received  our  kingdom  from  thee." 3  "I  am 
not  to  be  deposed  for  any  crime,"  4  was  the  assertion  ; 
"  I  am  subject  to  the  judgment  of  God  alone,"6  was 
the  claim.  The  council  of  the  Emperor,  in  reply, 
proceeded  to  declare  Gregory  himself  deposed,6  after 

law  the  bishop  was  an  officer  of  the  State.  He  had,  in  the  great  ma- 
jority of  cases,  political  duties  to  perform  as  important  as  his  ecclesi- 
astical duties.  The  lands  which  formed  the  endowment  of  his  office 
had  always  been  considered  as  being,  still  more  directly  than  any 
other  feudal  land,  the  property  of  the  State,  and  were  treated  as 
such  when  the  occasion  demanded,  from  times  before  Charles  Martel 
to  times  after  Gregory  VII.  At  this  period  these  lands  had  clearly  de- 
fined feudal  obligations  to  perform,  which  constituted  a  very  consider- 
able proportion  of  the  resources  of  the  State.  It  was  a  matter  of  vital 
importance  whether  officers  exercising  such  important  functions  and 
controlling  so  large  a  part  of  its  area  —  probably  everywhere  as  much 
as  one-third  of  the  territory  —  should  be  selected  by  the  State  or  by 
some  foreign  power  beyond  its  reach  and  having  its  own  peculiar  in- 
terests to  seek  "  (Civilisation  during  the  Middle  Ages,  by  George  Bur- 
ton Adams,  chap.  x.). 

1  Henry's  title  was  as  yet,  strictly  speaking,  only  "  King  of  the  Ro- 
mans."   He  was  crowned  as  Emperor  in  1084  by  the  Anti-Pope  Wibert. 

2  The  Emperor  Henry  IV.'s  answer  to  Gregory  VII.,  Jan.  24,  1076, 
Select  Historical  Documents  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Henderson,  iv.  ii.  5. 

8  Ibid.       *  Ibid.       '  Ibid.    See  also  iv.  ii.  8,  Summons  of  Henry  IV. 
0  Select  Historical  Documents,  iv.  ii.  6,  Letter  of  the  Bishops   to 
Gregory  VII.,  Z4th  Jan.  1076. 


2/8  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

which  the  Pope  and  his  synod  retaliated  by  banning 
all  the  dissentient  bishops  as  well  as  the  Emperor, 
declaring  the  royal  power  of  the  latter  forfeit,  and 
all  his  subjects  loosed  from  their  allegiance.1 

As  the  conflict  deepens,  we  distinguish  the  inevi- 
table weakness  of  the  position  taken  up  by  the  ruler 
in  the  name  of  the  civil  power.2  "  I  am  not  to  be 
deposed  for  any  crime,"  said  Henry  at  the  height  of 
his  claims,  "unless  —  which  God  forbid"  —  he  adds 
parenthetically,  "  I  should  have  strayed  from  the 
faith."  3  But  who  was  to  be  the  ultimate  authority 
in  such  a  matter  ?  In  the  presence  of  the  conception 
common  to  both  positions  that  the  spiritual  welfare 
of  the  world  was  of  greater  importance  than  its  tem- 
poral interests,  the  Pope  was  able,  with  relentless 
logic,  to  proceed  to  assert  the  inferiority  of  all  tem- 
poral kings  and  emperors  —  swollen  with  worldly 
glory,  sprung  from  those  who,  by  force,  pride,  plun- 
der, and  even  crimes,  inherited  a  servile  and  transi- 
tory kingdom.4  The  necks  of  their  greatest  were 
bowed  before  the  knees  of  priests.5  Even  the  might- 
iest of  them  were  not  so  great  as  many  who  were 
poor  and  meek  and  lowly,  the  subjects  of  a  kingdom 
of  liberty  and  eternity.6  How  monstrous,  therefore, 
and  intolerable  were  these  their  claims  on  "  the  ser- 
vant of  the  servants  of  God,"  on  the  bishops  and  ab- 
bots of  the  Church,  that  these  should  be  so  occupied 

1  Select  Historical  Documents,  iv.  ii.  7. 

2  Cf.  Lecky's  Rise  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,  vol.  ii.  p.  144,  and 
The  Holy  Roman  Empire  (Bryce),  chap.  x. 

8  Select  Historical  Documents  of  the  Middle  Ages,  iv.  ii.  5. 
*  Letter  of  Gregory  VII.  to  Bishop  Hermann  of  Metz,  I5th  March 
1081,  Select  Historical  Documents,  iv.  ii.  14. 

6  Ibid.  6  Ibid. 


vin  THE  GREAT   ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE  2/9 

by  secular  cares  "  that  they  are  compelled  assiduously 
to  frequent  the  court  and  to  perform  military  service. 
Which  things  indeed  are  scarcely,  if  at  all,  carried  on 
without  plunder,  sacrilege,  arson."1 

The  spectacle  of  the  human  mind  in  these  letters 
and  bulls  struggling  to  express  itself  through  the 
medium  of  the  conceptions  and  the  religious  imagery 
of  an  epoch  of  development  which  it  had  already  left 
behind  ;  struggling,  as  we  can  see  now,  in  the  closed 
circle  of  an  ideal  which  could  only  bring  the  world 
back  again  to  the  ruling  principle  of  an  era  beyond 
which  it  had  for  ever  advanced,  does  not  for  a 
moment  obscure  the  greatness  of  the  concept  which 
shines  through  the  whole  controversy.  But  the 
development  proceeds  in  history  towards  its  inherent 
climax.  Notwithstanding  the  great  amount  of  support 
received  by  the  representative  of  the  civil  power 
from  a  section  of  the  Church,  it  was  impossible  for 
the  Emperor  to  escape  the  inherent  consequences  of 
the  position  in  which  the  world  was  involved ;  and, 
within  a  short  time  from  the  opening  of  the  contro- 
versy, Henry  IV.  was  a  penitent  to  the  Pope  at  Ca- 
nossa,  begging  absolution  from  the  ban  of  the  spiritual 
power. 

From  this  point  forward  events  rise  rapidly  towards 
the  crisis  of  the  Middle  Ages.  As  the  conflict  widens, 
its  tendency  is  ever  in  one  direction.  The  compro- 
mise of  the  Concordat  of  Worms  in  1122,  nearly 
fifty  years  after  the  opening  of  the  controversy,  only 
thinly  veiled  the  triumph  of  the  popes  in  establishing 

1  Negotiations  between  Paschal  II.  and  Henry  V.,  Paschal's  Privi- 
lege of  the  First  Convention,  Feb.  12th,  mi,  Select  Historical  Docu- 
ments, iv.  ii.  15. 


280  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  supremacy  of  the  forces  represented  by  the  spirit- 
ual authority.  "It  was  manifest,"  says  Hallam,  "that 
the  see  of  Rome  had  conquered."  l  But  the  full  mean- 
ing of  what  was  taking  place  cannot  be  compressed 
into  such  a  formula.  In  Germany,  Italy,  France, 
and  England  the  larger  question  from  which  the  dis- 
pute itself  proceeded  continued  to  be  the  deepest 
issue  beneath  the  surface  of  political  life.  When  the 
peace  of  Venice  brought  the  controversy  for  the  time 
being  to  an  end  in  1177,  the  supremacy  of  the  spirit- 
ual dominion  had  become  firmly  established.  The 
spiritual  power  had  come  forth  victorious  from  the 
long  struggle.  When  its  victory  had  been  signalised 
by  that  scene  enacted  at  the  spot  where  three  red 
slabs  in  the  church  of  St.  Mark's  point  out  the  spot 
where  another  Emperor  knelt  before  the  Pope,  the 
end  of  the  first  stage,  towards  the  climax  which  we 
saw  foreshadowed  at  the  outset,  had  been  reached. 
After  a  hundred  years  of  conflict  the  Western  world 
saw  it  established  on  seemingly  unassailable  founda- 
tions that  if,  indeed,  the  spiritual  welfare  of  the 
world  is  of  greater  importance  than  all  those  tem- 
poral interests  with  which  the  State  is  concerned;  then 
the  power  in  whose  hands  the  spiritual  interests  are 
placed  is  higher  than  any  ruler  in  the  name  of  the 
State ;  his  will,  as  representing  those  interests,  rises 
superior  to  every  power  and  purpose  for  which  the 
temporal  State  exists. 

In  these  events  we  appear  to  see  the  human  mind 
in  the  historical  process  deliberately  advancing  step 
by  step  to  the  very  heart  of  the  remarkable  problem 

1  View  of  the  State  of  Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages,  by   Henry 
Hallam,  c.  vii. 


VHI  THE   GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          28 1 

which  was  outlined  at  the  outset.  Inherent,  to  all 
appearance,  in  the  actual  concept  by  which  alone  it 
is  possible  that  the  future  can  be  emancipated,  by 
which  alone  the  controlling  principles  of  human 
action  can  be  projected  beyond  the  limits  of  politi- 
cal consciousness,  there  would  appear  to  be  involved 
a  principle  which  must  prevent  that  free  play  of 
forces  within  the  present  out  of  which  alone  the 
larger  future  can  be  born ;  a  principle  which  must 
apparently  again  imprison  all  human  energies  in  a 
tyranny  greater  than  any  from  which  they  had 
emerged.  We  have  reached  the  brink  of  a  world 
in  which  it  seems  inevitable  that  a  rule  of  religion 
and  a  rule  of  law  should  become  again  one  and 
identical ;  nay,  more,  a  world  in  which,  to  use 
Maine's  phrase,  the  transgressor  of  a  religious  ordi- 
nance will  again  be  punished  by  civil  penalties.  But 
with  this  momentous  difference  :  A  rule  of  religion 
now  no  longer,  as  in  the  ancient  world,  relates  to 
the  interests  of  the  existing  political  State.  It  is 
considered  to  rise  superior  to,  and  supreme  over, 
every  temporal  purpose  whatever  for  which  the  State 
exists.  No  such  tremendous  potentiality  of  absolutism 
ever  lurked  in  the  ancient  world  beneath  any  of  the 
tyrannies  through  which  the  present  expressed  itself. 
The  further  and  greater  steps  which  proceed  from 
the  position  here  defined  follow  each  other  hencefor- 
ward in  rapid  succession.  With  the  triumph  in  uni- 
versal politics  of  the  conception  that  spiritual  interests 
are  superior  to  the  temporal  welfare  of  the  world,  the 
authority  representing  the  former  gradually  rises  su- 
preme over  every  power  and  purpose  of  the  temporal 
State,  and  the  dream  of  the  monks  of  Cluny  passes 


282  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

towards  its  realisation  :  "  The  possibility  of  assuming 
the  control  of  the  whole  Christian  world,  political  as 
well  as  ecclesiastical,  which  had  dawned  upon  the 
consciousness  of  the  Roman  Church," 1  is  at  last  visibly 
embodied  in  the  ideal  towards  which  the  world  is 
moving. 

The  steps  by  which  we  watch  the  growing  claims 
being  asserted  in  the  final  stage  are  to  be  followed 
throughout  the  public  life  of  nearly  all  the  States  of 
Europe.  In  Spain,  Hungary,  England,  France,  Ire- 
land, Scandinavia,  and  even  Russia,  the  influence  of 
the  ideal  towards  which  they  tend  in  political  affairs 
is  in  sight.  The  claim  underlying  that  ideal  is,  at 
times,  clearly  expressed  in  words.  It  is,  as  the  King 
of  Munster  in  Ireland  is  informed,  that  "  all  sover- 
eigns are  subjects  of  St.  Peter,  and  that  all  the  world 
owes  allegiance  to  him  and  to  his  vicar."2  In  the 
thirteenth  century  the  Latin  rulers  in  the  East  are 
subject  to  the  Pope;  Aragon,  Hungary,  and  England 
are  fiefs  of  Rome ;  King  John  of  England,  in  words 
of  his  own  Act,  freely  conceding  "  the  whole  kingdom 
of  England  and  the  whole  kingdom  of  Ireland  with 
all  their  rights  and  appurtenances  ....  and  now  re- 
ceiving and  holding  them,  as  it  were,  a  vassal  from 
God  and  the  Roman  Church."3 

1  Adams'  Civilisation  during  Ike  Middle  Ages,  c.  x.  2  Ibid, 

3  Volentes  nos  ipsos  humiliate  pro  Illo  Qui  Se  pro  nobis  humiliavit 
usque  ad  mortem,  gratia  Sancti  Spiritus  inspirante,  non  vi  inducti  nee 
timore  coacti,  sed  nostra  bona  spontaneaque  voluntate  ac  communi 
consilio  baronum  nostrorum,  orlerimus  et  libere  concedimus  Deo  et 
sanctis  apostolis  Ejus  Petro  et  Paulo  et  sanctae  Romanae  ecclesiae  matri 
nostrae,  ac  domino  nostro  papae  Innocentio  ejusque  catholicis  succes- 
soribus,  totum  regnum  Angliae  et  totum  regnum  Hiberniae,  cum  omni 
jure  et  pertinentiis  suis,  pro  remissione  peccatorum  nostrorum  et  totius  gen- 
eris nostri  tarn  pro  vivis  quam  defunctis  ;  et  amodo  ilia  a  Deo  et  ecclesia 


viii  THE   GREAT   ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          283 

It  sometimes  happens  that,  through  the  detached 
standpoint  of  English  historians,  the  dispute  between 
John  and  the  Pope  is  spoken  of  as  if  it  were  an  inci- 
dent in  English  history,  scarcely  to  be  conceived  of 
apart  from  the  weakness  of  the  king  or  the  special 
circumstances  of  his  reign.  The  deeper  student  of 
history  sees  how  local  this  view  is.  The  character 
of  John  inflamed  the  conditions  of  the  dispute  and 
produced  the  full  measure  of  his  humiliation.  But  it 
is  the  conflict  from  which  the  incident  itself  proceeds 
which  constitutes  at  the  time  the  largest  and  deepest 
issue  in  the  unfolding  of  our  civilisation.  And  the 
power  in  that  civilisation  which  had  already  broken 
the  Emperor  Henry  IV.  and  humbled  the  Emperor 
Frederick  I.,  was  not  likely  to  be  lightly  resisted  by 
any  sovereign  of  England  who  would  have  confronted 
it  upon  a  like  issue. 

On  the  threshold  of  the  fourteenth  century  we 
have  reached  the  Bull  "  Clericis  Laicos "  of  Boni- 
face VIII.,  to  which  a  greater  sovereign  of  England 
than  John  found  it  convenient  to  render  a  qualified 

Romana  tanquam  feodatarius  recipientes  et  tenentes,  in  praesentia  pru- 
dentis  viri  Pandulfi,  domini  papae  subdiaconi  et  familiaris,  fidelitatem 
exinde  praedicto  domino  nostro  papae  Innocentio,  ejusquc  catholicis 
successoribus  et  ecclesiae  Romanae,  secundum  subscriptam  formam 
facimus  et  juramus,  et  homagium  ligium  in  praesentia  domini  papae, 
si  coram  eo  esse  poterimus,  eidem  faciemus  ;  successores  et  haeredes 
nostros  de  uxore  nostra  in  perpctuum  obligantes,  ut  simih  modo  summo 
pontifici  qui  pro  tempore  fuerit,  et  ecclesiae  Romanae,  sine  contradic- 
tione  debeant  fidelitatem  praestare  et  homagium  recognoscere  :  From 
the  Act  of  Submission  made  by  John  to  Pandulf  at  Dover  on  the  I5th 
May  1213,  and  renewed  to  Nicolas,  ttishop  of  Tusculum,  at  Ixmdon  on 
3rd  October,  with  a  golden  bulla,  and  with  the  actual  performance  of 
liege  homage  here  promised  to  the  Pope.  —  Stubbs'  Select  Charters 
(John). 


284  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

obedience.  In  this  document  there  has  been  reached 
almost  the  last  stage  of  the  definition  of  the  problem 
outlined  at  the  outset.  It  is  declared  by  the  Bull 
to  be  forbidden  and  illegal  for  laymen  of  whatever 
degree  or  estate,  whether  claiming  as  "emperors, 
kings,  or  princes,  dukes,  counts  or  barons,  podestas, 
captains,  or  officials,  or  rectors  —  by  whatever  name 
they  are  called," 1  to  submit  representatives  of  the 
spiritual  authority  to  secular  jurisdiction.  In  the 
uncompromising  words  of  the  Bull :  "  All  jurisdic- 
tion is  denied  them  over  the  clergy  —  over  both  the 
persons  and  the  goods  of  ecclesiastics."2  The  cus- 
tom of  appealing  to  Rome  begun  in  England  under 
Henry  I.  had,  in  a  hundred  years,  grown  to  such  an 
extent  that  the  king's  jurisdiction  over  ecclesiastics 
had  become  almost  nominal  in  criminal  matters.3 
The  significant  words  of  this  Bull  mark  the  limits 
to  which  the  claim  of  the  spiritual  authority  now 
extended. 

The  tendency  which  accompanied  these  claims 
throughout  Europe  went  much  further,  it  has  to  be 
noted,  than  the  mere  emancipation  of  the  spiritual 
authorities  from  civil  jurisdiction.  The  aim  under- 
lying it  worked  steadily  in  the  direction  of  bringing 
the  whole  civil  jurisdiction  within  the  direct  control 
of  the  Church.  With  the  gradual  growth  of  the 

1  Henderson's  Select  Historical  Documents  of  the  Middle  Ages,  iv.  vi. 

2  Ibid. 

8  The  brief  but  significant  words  with  which  cap.  iii.  of  the  Consti- 
tutions of  Clarendon  concludes  —  "  Et  si  clericus  convictus  vel  confessus 
fuerit,  non  debet  de  cetero  eum  ecclesia  tueri "  (Stubbs*  Select  Char- 
ters) —  referred,  in  practice,  to  a  condition  of  affairs  in  which  the  eccle- 
siastical tribunals  had  not  only  encroached  on  the  secular,  but  in  which 
generally  they  had  begun  to  obtain  a  real  ascendency. 


VU1  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          285 

canon  law,  founded  on  the  rescripts  of  popes  and 
the  decrees  of  councils,  there  arose  throughout 
Europe  a  new  legal  code  and  a  new  class  of  legal 
practitioners.  In  the  canon  law,  as  Hallam  points 
out,  "  the  superiority  of  ecclesiastical  to  temporal 
power,  or  at  least  the  absolute  independence  of  the 
former,  may  be  considered  as  a  sort  of  key-note 
which  regulates  every  passage." 1  This  superiority, 
moreover,  existed  not  simply  in  theory.  Through- 
out the  temporal  governments  of  Christendom  most 
effective  measures  were  taken  by  the  spiritual  au- 
thority to  gradually  extend  its  control  to  general 
causes,  to  the  temporal  judges,  and  at  length  to 
all  civil  suits.  The  conditions  through  which  this 
end  was  achieved  often  lay  ready  at  hand.  Large 
classes  of  persons,  which  were  not  in  the  ordinary 
sense  considered  as  ecclesiastical,  were  nevertheless 
technically  considered  to  come  within  ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction.  The  poor,  the  orphans,  and  the  widows, 
for  instance,  were  held  to  be  under  the  protection 
of  the  Church,  and  as  such  could  not  be  sued  before 
any  lay  tribunal.2  Spiritual  causes,  again,  it  was 
agreed  by  both  sides,  appertained  to  the  spiritual 
tribunal.  But  as  it  was  held  that  the  Church  was 
always  bound  to  prevent  and  chastise  sin,  the  com- 
mon differences  of  individuals,  which  generally  in- 
volved some  charge  of  wilful  injury,  were  by  this 
means  without  difficulty  brought  under  ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction.3  Even  in  actions  relating  to  real  prop- 
erty in  land  a  similar  interpretation  produced  a  like 

1  View  of  the  Slate  of  Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages,  by  Henry 
Hallam,  chap.  vii. 
*  Ibid. 


286  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

result.  For  the  ecclesiastical  tribunals  took  cogni- 
sance of  breaches  of  contract,  at  least  where  an  oath 
had  been  pledged,  and  of  personal  trusts,  and  they 
were  able  to  claim  jurisdiction  on  this  ground.1  It 
is  true  that  excommunication  continued  to  be,  in 
theory,  the  only  chastisement  which  the  Church 
could  directly  inflict.  But  it  must  be  remembered 
that  sentences  of  excommunication  were  enforced 
by  the  civil  magistrate,  by  imprisonment  and  con- 
fiscation, and  at  times  even  by  the  death  penalty.2 

Measures,  practices,  and  interpretations  of  this 
kind  tended  to  extend  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Church 
on  all  sides.  From  the  twelfth  century  onward, 

1  View  of  the  State  of  Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages,  by  Henry 
Hallam,  chap.  vii. 

2  When  the  object  of  punishment  went  further  than  the  individual, 
"  the  Church,"  says  Hallam,  "  had  recourse  to  a  more  comprehensive 
punishment.     For  the  offence  of  a  nobleman,  she  put  a  county,  for  that 
of  a  prince,  his  entire  kingdom,  under  an  interdict,  or  suspension  of 
religious  offices.     During  an  interdict,  the  churches  were  closed,  the 
bells  silent,  the  dead  unburied,  no  rite  but  those  of  baptism  and  extreme 
unction   performed.     The   penalty  fell  upon  those  who  had  neither 
partaken  in  nor  could  have  prevented   the   offence  ;   .  .  .   Interdicts 
were  so  rare  before  the  time  of  Gregory  VII.  that  some  have  referred 
them  to  him  as  their  author  ;   instances  may,  however,  be  found  of  an 
earlier  date,  and  especially  that  which  accompanied  the  excommunica- 
tion of  Robert,  king   of  France.     They  were   afterwards  issued  not 
unfrequently  against  kingdoms  ;   but  in  particular  districts  they  con- 
tinually occurred.     This  was  the  mainspring  of  the  machinery  that  the 
clergy  set  in  motion,  the  lever  by  which  they  moved  the  world.    From 
the  moment  that  these    interdicts  and   excommunications   had    been 
tried,  the  powers  of  the  earth  might  be  said  to  have  existed  only  by 
sufferance.     Nor  was  the  validity  of  such  denunciations  supposed  to 
depend  upon  their  justice.     The  imposer,  indeed,  of  an  unjust  excom- 
munication was  guilty  of  a  sin  ;  but  the  party  subjected  to  it  had  no 
remedy  but   submission  "   (  View   of  the  State  of  Europe  during  the 
Middle  Ages,  chap.  vii.). 


vin  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST  STAGE          287 

says  Hallam,  the  boundary  between  temporal  and 
spiritual  offences  grew  continually  less  distinct,1  so 
that  towards  the  fourteenth  century  ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction  "rapidly  encroached  upon  the  secular 
tribunals,  and  seemed  to  threaten  the  usurpation 
of  an  exclusive  supremacy  over  all  persons  and 
causes."2 

In  the  conflict  following  the  resistance  by  Philip 
of  France  to  the  claims  enunciated  in  the  Bull 
"Clericis  Laicos,"  we  reach  at  last  the  complete 
definition  of  the  capital  position  towards  which  the 
process  at  work  in  Western  history  had  moved  for 
more  than  a  thousand  years  ;  and  have  disclosed, 
beneath  the  position  in  history  in  our  civilisation, 
the  full  outlines  of  the  remarkable  problem  which 
we  saw  foreshadowed  at  the  beginning.  In  the 
Bull  "  Unam  Sanctam,"3  issued  at  the  opening  of 
the  fourteenth  century,  and  towards  the  close  of  the 
struggle  with  Philip,  the  claims  of  the  spiritual 
authority  are  enunciated  with  an  uncompromising 
clearness  which  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired.  The 
superiority  of  spiritual  interests  to  temporal  welfare, 
being  taken  as  a  concept  fundamental  and  unchal- 
lenged, the  long  dispute  of  the  centuries  as  to  who 
was  to  be  the  ultimate  authority  in  spiritual  matters 
reaches  at  last  its  inevitable  culmination.  The 
claim  of  the  civil  ruler  is  once  and  for  all  dis- 
posed of.  The  spectacle,  which  had  repeated  itself 
throughout  the  centuries  in  the  past,  of  the  temporal 

1  View  of  the  Stale  of  Europe  during  the  Middle  Ages,  c.  vii. 

2  Ibid. 

8  Select  Historical  Documents   of  the   Middle   Ages    (Henderson), 
iv.  vii. 


288  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

sovereign  against  whom  a  censure  or  a  bull  of  ex- 
communication had  been  launched,  assembling  a 
council  of  the  bishops  or  powers  of  his  own  people 
to  condemn  the  excommunication  or  censure,  and 
to  retaliate  on  the  power  which  had  launched  it * 
—  may  still  be  repeated,  as  it  was  about  to  be  re- 
peated in  France.  But  it  has  been  met  in  the 
Bull  "  Unam  Sanctam "  by  the  inevitable  overrul- 
ing counter  claim  :  "  there  is  one  holy  Catholic  and 
Apostolic  Church,  outside  of  which  there  is  neither 
salvation  nor  remission  of  sins,"2  and  "we  declare, 
announce,  and  define  that  it  is  altogether  necessary 
to  salvation  for  every  human  creature  to  be  subject 
to  the  Roman  Pontiff."3  The  position  involved  in 
such  a  claim  throughout  the  secular  affairs  of  the 
world  is  stated  at  last  with  clearness  and  precision. 
It  is  that  towards  which  the  movement  of  history 
had  ripened  through  the  struggles  of  the  past. 
There  were  in  the  world,  it  is  asserted  in  the  Bull, 
two  swords  —  the  spiritual  and  the  temporal  —  but  the 
claim  respecting  them  is  now  definite  and  emphatic. 
It  is  that  "  both  swords,  the  spiritual  and  the 
material,  therefore,  are  in  the  power  of  the  Church  ; 
the  one,  indeed,  to  be  wielded  for  the  Church,  the 
other  by  the  Church  ;  the  one  by  the  hand  of  the 
priest,  the  other  by  the  hand  of  kings  and  knights, 
but  at  the  will  and  sufferance  of  the  priest.  One 
sword,  moreover,  ought  to  be  under  the  other, 

1  Cf.  History  of  the  Rise  and  Influence  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,\ry 
W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  vol.  ii.  p.  144. 

2  The    Bull   "  Unam   Sanctam,"   in    Henderson's    Select  Historical 
Documents  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  text  being  quoted  from  the  latest 
revision  in  Revue  des  questions  historiques,  July  1889.  8  Ibid. 


vin  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST  STAGE         289 

and  the  temporal  authority  to  be  subjected  to  the 
spiritual.  .  .  .  For,  the  truth  bearing  witness,  the 
spiritual  power  has  to  establish  the  earthly  power, 
and  to  judge  it  if  it  be  not  good."  l 

There  could  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
position  here  reached,  or  of  the  meaning  of  it  as 
applied  to  the  secular  affairs  of  the  world.  Our 
civilisation  has  reached  the  climax  of  the  problem 
towards  which  the  tendencies  of  thirteen  centuries 
of  history  had  developed.  In  the  name  of  the 
highest  power  in  Christendom,  the  principle  is  in 
effect  enunciated  that  a  rule  of  religion  must  be, 
in  the  last  resort,  a  rule  of  law.  We  have  entered 
on  the  stage  when  the  transgressor  of  a  religious 
ordinance  is  about  to  be  punished  by  civil  penalties 
on  a  scale  of  which  there  is  no  previous  example ; 
and  with  a  thoroughness  and  completeness  that 
even  the  ancient  civilisations  fell  far  short  of.  But, 
as  has  been  said,  with  this  significant  difference : 
The  rule  of  religion  from  which  a  rule  of  law  in 
the  present  now  proceeds,  while  it  is  enforced  by  the 
State,  is  no  longer  bounded  by  any  interest  of  the 
State.  The  religious  ordinance,  the  transgression  of 
which  is  about  to  be  punished  on  a  universal  scale 
by  civil  penalties  in  the  present,  is  no  longer  related 
to  any  object  of  the  State.  The  object  of  the  pun- 
ishment claims  to  issue  superior  to  every  interest 
included  within  the  bounds  of  civil  consciousness,  to 
rise  supreme  over  every  power  and  purpose  for  which 
the  temporal  State  as  such  exists.  No  forms  in 
which  the  tyrannies  of  the  ancient  world  could  have 
imprisoned  the  energies  of  the  human  mind  or  of 

1  Cf.  supra. 


WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  human  will  could,  to  all  appearance,  have  pos- 
sessed such  an  illimitable  potentiality  of  absolutism. 
We  have  advanced,  in  short,  to  the  heart  of  the  first 
great  crisis  of  the  human  mind  in  the  history  of  the 
development  in  which  it  becomes  the  destiny  of  the 
present  to  pass  under  the  control  of  the  future  in  our 
Western  civilisation. 

In  the  first  centuries  of  the  era  in  which  we  are 
living,  we  saw  how  the  leading  crises  of  the  system 
of  belief  which  had  become  associated  with  our 
civilisation  were  but  the  outward  expression  of  a 
single  fact.  There  was  represented  in  them,  we 
saw,  the  effort,  again  and  again  repeated,  to  close 
the  antithesis  which  had  been  opened  in  the  human 
mind ;  and  by  so  doing  to  bring  the  world  back 
again  to  that  equilibrium  within  the  horizon  of  exist- 
ing consciousness  which  was  represented  in  the 
philosophy  of  the  ancient  world.  So  now,  even 
where  the  nature  of  the  supreme  concept  to  which 
the  human  mind  has  become  related  is  clearly  visible 
beneath  all  the  events  of  history,  we  see  the  process 
still  caught,  as  it  were,  within  the  closed  circle  of  the 
State,  still  involved  in  conditions  in  which  a  rule  of 
religion  must,  by  inherent  necessity,  become  a  rule 
of  law,  enforced  in  the  last  resort  by  civil  penalties. 
To  all  appearance,  the  movement  in  which  there 
was  involved  the  infinite  potentiality  of  the  emanci- 
pation of  the  future  in  the  present  —  in  which  there 
lay  inherent  that  free  conflict  of  forces  out  of  which 
the  greater  future  can  alone  be  born,  and  towards 
which  the  whole  process  of  evolution  in  human  so- 
ciety must  ultimately  ascend — is  itself  imprisoned 
in  an  absolutism  of  the  still  ascendant  present. 


VHI  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST  STAGE         291 

Looking  back  over  the  period  through  which 
Western  history  has  run  since  the  opening  of  the  new 
epoch,  the  spectacle  presented  is  remarkable  in  the 
last  degree.  The  universal  conditions  accompanying 
the  progress  of  the  development  here  described  have 
been  scarcely  less  striking  than  the  development  itself. 

With  the  rise  of  the  spiritual  authority  into  a 
position  of  ultimate  control  in  the  State,  the  prog- 
ress of  our  Western  world  has  been  towards  a 
condition  in  which  an  almost  complete  paralysis  of 
the  speculative  and  critical  faculties  of  the  human 
mind  has  supervened ;  and  in  which  men  have  sunk 
gradually  into  a  stupor  of  ignorance  and  credulity. 
Mr.  Lecky's  sombre  description  of  the  conditions  of 
the  world  as  they  presented  themselves  throughout 
this  period  can  hardly  be  considered  to  be  over- 
stated. The  spirit  which  prevailed  had  produced  a 
condition  in  thought  in  which,  says  Mr.  Lecky, 
"  the  very  sense  of  truth  seemed  blotted  out  from 
the  minds  of  men."  l  During  these  ages  "  every 
mental  disposition  which  philosophy  pronounces  to 
be  essential  to  a  legitimate  research  was  almost 
uniformly  branded  as  a  sin,  and  a  large  proportion 
of  the  most  deadly  intellectual  vices  were  deliber- 
ately inculcated  as  virtues.  ...  It  was  sinful  to 
study  with  equal  attention  and  with  an  indifferent 
mind  the  writings  on  both  sides,  sinful  to  resolve  to 
follow  the  light  of  evidence  wherever  it  might  lead, 
sinful  to  remain  poised  in  doubt  between  conflicting 
opinions,  sinful  to  give  only  a  qualified  assent  to 
indecisive  arguments,  sinful  even  to  recognise  the 
moral  or  intellectual  excellence  of  opponents.  .  .  . 

1  The  A'ise  and  Influence  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,  vo|,  i.  p.  397. 


2Q2  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

The  theologians,  by  destroying  every  book  that  could 
generate  discussion,  by  diffusing  to  every  field  of 
knowledge  a  spirit  of  boundless  credulity,  and,  above 
all,  by  persecuting  with  atrocious  cruelty  those  who 
differed  from  their  opinions,  succeeded  ...  in  almost 
arresting  the  action  of  the  European  mind."  l 

The  conditions  of  the  problem  are  complete.  It  is 
an  altogether  remarkable  spectacle.  •  Yet  the  evolu- 
tionist, who  has  succeeded  in  preserving  his  stand- 
point of  detachment,  feels  that  he  must  never  for  a 
moment  lose  sight  of  the  central  position  upon 
which  attention  must  continue  to  be  concentrated. 
It  remains  to  him,  under  all  its  features,  still  a 
spectacle  remarkable  in  one  particular  over  and  above 
every  other.  It  is  the  potentiality  of  the  cosmic 
drama  which  is  unfolding  itself  that  holds  the  intel- 
lect as  the  supreme  fact  to  which  every  detail  is 
subordinate.  In  an  age  when  the  human  mind  has 
come  to  discuss  in  a  scientific  spirit  the  import, 
on  the  distant  verge  of  social  consciousness,  of  insti- 
tutions like  Totemism  and  Ancestor  Worship,  it  is 
absolutely  impossible  for  the  evolutionist,  who  has 
emancipated  himself  from  the  prepossessions  and 
prejudices  of  the  unscientific  spirit  bred  in  the  dis- 
putes of  the  past,  to  doubt  for  a  moment  the  over- 
whelming evolutionary  significance  of  the  principle 
at  work  in  the  world.  Its  very  excesses,  its  very 
absolutism,  are  hardly  more  than  the  measure  of  its 
potentiality. 

Yet  whither  is  the  progress  of  the  world  tending  ? 
We  have  travelled  to  the  brink  of  the  period  when 

1  The  Rise  and  Influence  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,  vol.  ii.  pp. 
87,  88; 


VIII  THE   GREAT   ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE  293 

the  flames  of  universal  persecution  in  the  cause  of  the 
new  absolutism  rise  on  the  horizon ;  when  religious 
persecution,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  is  actually  about  to  possess  on  a  universal 
scale  that  ominous  significance  which  Mr.  Ritchie 
distinguishes  in  it  as  associated  with  the  faith  of 
Christianity.1  The  institution  of  the  Inquisition, 
founded  as  early  as  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  and  the  decree  of  the  Fourth  Council  of  the 
Lateran  of  a  few  years  later,  enjoining  all  rulers  "to 
exterminate  from  their  dominions  all  those  who  are 
branded  as  heretics  by  the  Church,"  2  is  soon  to  ac- 
quire in  this  relation  a  grim  significance  throughout 
the  greater  part  of  our  Western  world.3  We  are 
close  to  the  period  when  the  Spanish  peninsula, 
under  the  forms  of  the  Inquisition,  is  to  be  invaded 
by  a  tyranny  unknown  in  the  world  of  the  ancients  ;4 
when  religious  persecution  is  to  prevail  throughout 
Western  Europe  as  it  was  never  known  in  the  world  6 
before  ;  when  Paul  IV.  is  to  institute  the  Index  Ex- 
purgatorius ;*  when  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  and 
Philip  II.  of  Spain  are  to  become  associated  with  that 
movement  in  which  a  sentence  of  death  is  to  be  formu- 
lated against  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  Netherlands 
as  heretics,"  the  spiritual  authority  leaving  to  the  able 
and  willing  civil  power  the  selection  of  the  victims  in 

1  Cf.  Natitral  Rights,  chap.  viii. 

2  Cf.  I.ecky's  Rise  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,  vol.  ii.  p.  30. 
*Cf.  //>i</.,  vol.  ii.  chap.  iv. 

4  Ranke's  History  of  the  Popes,  ii.  §  6.  *  Ibid. 

6  Lecky's  Rise  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,\Q\.  ii.  p.  119;  and  Ranke's 
History  of  the  Popes,  ii.  §  6. 

7  Motley's  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  chap.  ii.  part  i.  and  chap.  ii. 
part  iii. 


2Q4  WESTERN   CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

a  condemnation  in  which,  as  Motley  points  out,  all 
being  sentenced  alike  to  a  common  grave,  it  was  pos- 
sible for  any,  without  warning,  difficulty,  or  trial,  to 
be  carried  to  the  scaffold  or  the  stake.1  Nay,  more, 
we  have  almost  reached  the  period  when,  looking 
into  the  future,  we  see  the  spirit  which  rises  to  ques- 
tion this  absolutism,  itself  caught  in  the  influence  of 
the  same  ideas,  and  differing  neither  in  tendency  nor 
in  will  to  make  its  own  absolutism  as  unquestioned  as 
that  which  it  challenged. 

What,  therefore,  is  the  solution  of  the  problem 
towards  which  the  world  is  advancing  ?  Is  the  West- 
ern mind  destined  to  reach  a  synthesis  of  knowledge 
hidden  as  yet  beneath  the  horizon  ?  Is  it  destined  to 
retrace  its  steps,  and,  baffled  and  disillusioned,  to 
abandon  that  conviction  to  which  we  have  seen  it 
advance  in  the  full  light  of  history  —  the  conviction 
that  what  it  has  come  to  call  its  spiritual  welfare  is 
more  important  than  its  temporal  interests  ? 

The  principles  of  the  evolutionary  process  which 
are  working  out  the  destiny  of  the  peoples  who  are 
to  inherit  the  future  are  principles  which  can  never 
more  be  comprised  within  the  content  of  political 
consciousness.  The  peoples  to  whom  the  future 
belongs  are  they  who  already  bear  upon  their  shoul- 
ders the  burden  of  the  principles  with  which  the 
interests  of  that  future  are  identified.  And  yet,  how 
is  the  future  to  be  emancipated  in  the  present  ?  How 
is  the  race  to  rise  to  a  sense  of  direct,  personal,  and 
compelling  responsibility  to  a  principle  transcending 
every  power  and  purpose  included  in  the  limits  of  its 

1  Motley's  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  chap.  ii.  part  i.  and  chap.  ii. 
part  iii. 


VIII  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    FIRST   STAGE          295 

political  consciousness ;  and  still  be  so  occupied  with 
its  present  as  to  set  free  therein  the  play  of  its  high- 
est powers  ?  How  are  we  to  witness  the  controlling 
principles  of  human  consciousness  projected  out  of 
the  present ;  and  yet  see  opened  within  the  present  a 
free  conflict  of  forces  such  as  has  never  been  in  the 
world  before,  out  of  which  the  greater  future  can 
alone  be  born,  and  towards  which  the  whole  process 
of  evolution  in  society  must  ultimately  ascend  ? 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY  IN 
WESTERN  HISTORY:  SECOND  STAGE 

IN  the  study  of  the  many-sided  movement  which, 
dating  from  the  Renaissance  in  Europe,  and  which, 
taking  its  course  through  the  religious  and  political 
upheaval  known  in  history  as  the  Reformation,  carries 
us  rapidly  forward  into  the  midst  of  the  principles 
governing  the  development  of  the  modern  world,  it 
is  of  the  first  importance  that  the  attention  of  the 
observer  should  continue  to  be  concentrated  on 
the  character  of  the  central  problem  with  which  we 
have  been  concerned  from  the  beginning.  That 
problem  in  its  briefest  terms  involves,  as  we  saw,  the 
realisation  in  Western  history  of  conditions  in  which 
the  principle  of  Projected  Efficiency  is  to  become 
more  effectively  operative  than  has  ever  been  possible 
in  the  world  before. 

Standing  at  this  point  for  a  moment  and  looking 
back  over  the  history  of  the  progress  which  the  race 
has  made,  it  may  be  recalled  that  the  conditions  under 
which  development  has  been  possible  in  the  social 
process  have  had  one  characteristic  feature.  While 
progress  has  been  identified  from  the  beginning  with 
competition,  the  inherent  tendency  of  all  competition, 
in  the  era  of  the  ascendency  of  the  present,  has,  of 
necessity,  been  for  the  strongest  competitive  forces  to 
become  absolute,  and  so  to  suppress  in  time  those 

296 


CHAP,  ix     THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE      297 

conditions  of  really  free  conflict  out  of  which  the 
most  effective  future  could  arise.  This  has  been  the 
key,  as  we  saw,  to  that  condition  of  the  world  which 
culminated  in  the  ancient  civilisations. 

If  we  have  been  right  so  far,  the  significance  of 
Western  civilisation  from  the  beginning  of  our  era 
has  been  related  to  a  single  cause  ;  namely,  the  poten- 
tiality of  a  principle  inherent  in  it  to  project  the 
controlling  principles  of  its  consciousness  beyond  the 
present ;  and  so  ultimately  to  operate  in  breaking  up 
all  the  closed  imperiums  in  government,  in  action, 
in  thought,  and  in  religion,  through  which  the  om- 
nipotent present  had  hitherto  been  able  to  become 
absolute.  The  controlling  principles  of  human  re- 
sponsibility being  no  longer  confined  within  the 
present,  the  evolutionary  significance  of  the  social 
process  in  Western  history  consists,  in  short,  in  its 
tendency  to  produce  the  condition  of  such  a  free 
rivalry  of  forces  as  has  never  been  in  the  world 
before ;  by  rendering  it  impossible  to  shut  up  again 
the  human  will  in  any  system  of  government,  of  action, 
or  of  thought,  through  which  the  tyranny  of  forces 
expressing  themselves  within  the  limits  of  political 
consciousness  could  once  more  become  absolute.  It 
is  upon  the  conditions  of  the  world-embracing  strug- 
gle in  which  the  future  is  thus  to  be  emancipated,  and 
in  which  the  hitherto  prevailing  ascendency  of  the 
present  in  the  world  is  destined  to  be  ultimately 
broken,  that  the  attention  of  the  mind  has  now  to 
be  fixed. 

No  situation  can  be  of  more  absorbing  interest 
to  the  evolutionist  than  that  which  presents  itself 
to  him  when,  with  the  conditions  of  the  remarkable 


298  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

problem  foreshadowed  in  the  previous  chapters  fresh 
in  his  mind,  he  watches  now  the  activities  of  our 
Western  world  being  slowly  drawn  into  the  influence 
of  that  modern  struggle  from  out  of  which,  at  the  end 
of  centuries  of  strife,  there  is  to  emerge  gradually 
into  view  the  first  rough  outlines  of  the  master-princi- 
ple of  a  new  world.  It  is  to  be  a  world  in  which 
every  cause,  and  institution,  and  opinion  will  in  the 
end  hold  its  very  life  at  the  challenge  of  such  criti- 
cism and  competition  as  the  human  mind  has  never 
known  before.  But  it  is  to  be  a  world,  withal,  in 
which  the  entire  phenomena  of  progress  must  con- 
tinue to  be  related  to  a  single  underlying  life-principle, 
namely,  that  the  ultimate  controlling  principles  of 
human  action  have  been  projected  beyond  the  con- 
tent of  all  systems  of  interest  whatever  included 
within  the  limits  of  political  consciousness. 

Now  as  we  regard  the  conditions  towards  which 
our  Western  world  has  moved  at  the  close  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  it  may  be  observed  that  the  ideal  which 
has  come  once  more  to  hold  the  human  mind  is  that 
of  a  universal  empire  resting  ultimately  on  force. 
The  universal  empire  is  indeed  no  longer  an  empire 
in  which  the  ideal  of  men  is  that  the  strongest 
material  interests  in  the  present  should  become  abso- 
lute and  omnipotent.  It  is  a  universal  empire  in 
which  a  particular  belief  has  become  absolute ;  in 
which  it  is  again  conceived  that  a  rule  of  religion 
should,  in  the  last  resort,  be  a  rule  of  civil  law ;  in 
which  it  is  considered  that  the  State  itself  exists  now 
for  no  higher  end  than  that  all  its  machinery,  and 
purposes,  and  powers  should  be  devoted  to  establish- 
ing and  maintaining  throughout  the  world  the  sway  of 


ix  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        299 

one  accepted  and  authoritative  interpretation  of  abso- 
lute truth,  which  the  human  mind  has  come  to  place 
higher  than  any  interest  whatever  comprised  within 
the  limits  of  political  consciousness. 

What  we  have  now  to  watch  is  the  tremendous 
concept  upon  which  this  ideal  rested  in  the  minds 
of  men — a  concept  still  entangled,  as  we  may  per- 
ceive, in  the  theory  of  the  State,  still  allied  to  the 
principle  of  universal  force,  and,  therefore,  as  we  may 
see,  still  imprisoned  within  the  closed  circle  of  the  yet 
ascendant  present  —  moving  now  at  last  in  Western 
history  towards  a  realisation  of  that  potentiality  which 
has  been  inherent  in  it  from  the  beginning.  In  the 
resulting  revolution  we  are  destined  to  witness  our 
civilisation  carried  far  beyond  the  content  of  any  syn- 
thesis of  knowledge  which  the  human  mind  had  as 
yet  imagined,  and  to  see  the  systems  of  thought 
representing  the  new  spirit,  themselves  impelled,  by 
forces  greater  than  they  understood,  towards  a  goal 
of  which  they  had  no  perception  at  the  beginning,  and 
of  which  the  full  significance  is  even  as  yet  but  dimly 
realised  by  the  Western  mind. 

It  has  been  usual  in  the  past  in  nearly  all  studies 
of  the  period  in  which  the  Middle  Ages  merge  into 
the  modern  world  to  consider  this  epoch  of  upheaval 
as  dating  from,  or  at  all  events  as  inseparably  asso- 
ciated with,  the  movement  taking  its  rise  in  Italy 
towards  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  known 
as  the  Renaissance.  As  the  evolutionist  looks  long 
and  closely  at  the  history  of  the  Italian  Renaissance 
he  comes,  however,  sooner  or  later,  to  perceive  that 
it  is  not  really  through  this  movement,  in  the  first 
instance,  that  he  has  to  follow  the  main  stream  of 


300  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

Western  development  as  it  descends  through  its  prin- 
cipal current  towards  the  future.  Just  as  in  the  period 
at  the  beginning  of  our  era  in  which  a  long,  culminat- 
ing epoch  of  absolutism  under  many  phases  had  pro- 
duced the  tendencies  of  thought  to  be  distinguished 
in  the  Roman  world ;  so  now,  in  the  earlier  Renais- 
sance, we  have  in  sight  the  movements  in  which  the 
minds  of  men  attempt  to  rise  above,  or  to  separate 
themselves  from,  the  extraordinary  results  which  have 
been  produced.  And  yet,  as  in  the  Roman  world, 
without  being  in  themselves  representative,  for  the 
time  being,  of  any  new  principle  of  life. 

In  the  movements,  accordingly,  in  which  we  see 
the  Italian  intellect  turning  again  with  enthusiasm, 
and  a  sense  of  awe,  to  the  revived  study  of  the  litera- 
ture, the  art,  and  the  knowledge  of  the  ancient  civili- 
sations—  in  which  we  see  the  mind  of  Machiavelli 
captivated  with  the  old  Roman  theory  of  the  State 
and  its  inherent  ideal  of  the  secularisation  of  religion  j1 
in  which  we  see  philosophy,  in  the  theories  of  Pico 
della  Mirandola,  Telesio,  and  a  crowd  of  others,2  mov- 
ing again,  on  the  one  hand,  towards  the  concepts  of 
Neo-Platonism  and,  on  the  other,  towards  the  ideals 
of  a  vague  pantheistic  humanism  —  we  have  much 
that  suggests  a  close  parallel  to  the  period  when  the 
humanitarian  ideals  of  the  ancient  philosophy  held 
the  mind  of  the  Roman  world  at  the  beginning  of  our 
era,  without  being  able  to  supply  any  new  life-princi- 
ple to  a  system  of  society  the  governing  causes  of 
which  they  antagonised.3 

1  Cf.  Machiavelli's  Discourses  on  the  First  Decade  of  Titus  Limits, 
i.  xi.-xv.  and  iii.  xv.-xvii. 

2  Cf.  History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  by  Kuno  Fischer,  chap.  v.     8  Ibid. 


ix  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        301 

In  all  the  earlier  movements  of  the  Renaissance 
we  may  distinguish,  accordingly,  that  we  have  the 
same  characteristic  standpoint.  The  effort  which 
these  movements  represent  is  an  effort,  not  to  ac- 
centuate that  antithesis  which  has  been  opened  in 
the  Western  mind  —  and  to  which  we  have  seen  the 
characteristic  potentiality  of  our  civilisation  to  be 
related  —  but  an  effort  to  close  it  again.1  As  in  the 
outlook  of  the  Stoics,  and  in  the  theories  of  Neo- 
Platonism,  the  tendency  of  the  movements  them- 
selves is  only  to  bring  the  world  back  to  a  standpoint 
beyond  which  the  evolutionary  process  has,  in  reality, 
moved.2 

1  Cf.  The  Ethic  of  Free  Thought,  by  Karl  Pearson,  ii.  viii. 

2  The  name  of  world-wide  renown  which  has  come  down  through 
history  as  representative  of  this  tendency  in  politics  is  that  of  Machia- 
velli.      To   Machiavelli,  in  the   midst  of  the   wretchedness   and    the 
debased   circumstances  of  the  time,  the  return  to  the  study  of  the 
ancient  civilisations  had  been  a  kind  of  intoxication.     The  old  Roman 
State  contrasted  with  the  prevailing  condition  of  the  world  became  to 
him  a  pattern,  an  ideal,  an  inspiration.     The  religion  of  the  ancient 
Romans  was  the  State;  the  State  was  the  end  of  all  human  effort ;  the 
State  represented  the  ultimate  meaning  of  all  human  morals.   The  sense 
of  opposition  between  the  secular  State  and  something  which  had  since 
been  introduced  into  the  world  presented  itself  to  Machiavelli,  in  the 
end,  as  a  kind  of  abnormality  in  nature.     (Compare  the  influence  in 
this  connection  of  his  contemporary,  Pietro  Pomponatius.*)     If  only  the 
State  could  be  made  again  the  supreme  end  of  human  effort,  the  over- 
ruling object  of  human  morals !     (Compare  the  Discourses  on  the  First 
Decade  of  Titus  Livius  and  The  Prince,  in  which  the  ethics,  the  aims, 
the  ideals,  and  polity  of  the  ancient  Roman  State  are  the  examples 
held    up  for  imitation.)      This  was  the  ideal  for  which    Machiavelli 
stood,  so  far  as  it  can  be  expressed  in  so  few  words.    But  of  the  deeper 
tendency  which  these  principles  involved  as  their  influence  was  to  be 
mingled  with  that  of  other  causes  in  the  historical  development  in  our 
civilisation — the  tendency  to  the  separation  of  the  theory  of  the  State 
from  the  principles  of  ethics  and  religion  —  Machiavelli  himself  remained 
entirely  unconscious. 


302  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

Vanini,  indeed,  towards  the  close  of  the  Renais- 
sance, like  Plethon  at  its  beginning,  like  Porphyry 
in  the  Neo-Platonism  of  the  third  century,  was  still 
imagining  the  return  of  our  civilisation  to  the  stand- 
point of  the  ancient  philosophy.  Nay,  like  so  many 
who  had  preceded  him,  he  was  dreaming  of  the  aban- 
donment by  the  Western  mind  of  that  system  of 
religious  belief  with  which  it  became  associated  at 
the  beginning  of  our  era.  To  many  minds  of  the 
Italian  Renaissance  —  as  to  Voltaire  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  as  to  James  Mill  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  as  to  many  minds  still  amongst  us  —  that 
element  in  the  concepts  of  the  system  of  belief 
associated  with  our  civilisation  which  projects  the 
principles  of  human  conduct  beyond  any  possible 
equilibrium  in  the  present  had  simply  no  meaning.1 

1  Compare  the  two  in  Machiavelli's  Discourses  on  the  First  Decade 
of  Titus  Livius,  \.  xi.-xv.  and  iii.  xv.-xvii.  On  its  intellectual  side  the 
Italian  Renaissance  in  many  of  its  representatives  expressed  a  develop- 
ment towards  a  kind  of  nature  philosophy,  a  movement  resembling  in 
many  of  its  deeper  intellectual  features  the  earlier  Neo-Platonism  dis- 
cussed in  a  previous  chapter.  We  recognise  this  characteristic  feature 
under  many  forms  —  literary,  artistic,  philosophical,  and  religious  —  in 
the  early  Gemistos  Plethon  as  in  the  later  Campanella,  in  the  mystical 
•von  Nettesheim  as  in  the  naturalistic  Telesio.  Beneath  the  surface  of 
the  humanist  movement  there  is,  in  short,  to  be  always  distinguished 
the  ultimate  conception  of  the  sufficiency  of  existing  human  nature, 
and  the  longing  for  the  free  and  unrestrained  expression  of  it  as  in  the 
ancient  civilisations,  this  tendency  rising  in  some  of  its  forms  to  a  kind 
of  deifying  of  nature.  The  difference  between  this  phase  of  the  move- 
ment and  the  Neo-Platonism  of  an  earlier  period  has  often  been  dis- 
cussed at  length.  But  the  leading  fact  of  the  movement  as  a  whole, 
with  which  we  are  here  concerned,  stands  out  clearly.  It  is  that  in 
this  feature  of  the  Renaissance,  as  in  that  political  phase  represented 
by  Machiavelli,  we  see  the  human  mind  on  the  threshold  of  a  new  era, 
already  indeed  feeling  the  vast  stirrings  of  its  spirit,  but  as  yet  dream- 


IX  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        303 

The  absolutely  cosmic  significance  of  the  antithesis 
which  these  concepts  had  opened  in  the  human  mind ; 
the  infinite  reach  of  a  process  in  which  the  whole 
period  of  the  era  in  which  men  were  living,  contained 
as  yet  scarcely  more  than  the  opening  phase  of  a 
world-drama  in  which  the  present  was  being  slowly 
envisaged  with  a  future  to  which  it  was  to  be  subor- 
dinated, and  in  which  every  principle  of  the  human 
mind  was  destined  in  the  end  to  be  broken  to  the 
ends  of  a  social  efficiency  beyond  the  furthest  limits 
of  political  consciousness,  had  not  dawned  on  the 
imaginations  of  men. 

All  the  main  tendencies  of  the  Renaissance,  as 
a  movement  liberating  the  human  mind ;  all  the 
characteristic  spirit  of  inquiry  which  produced  the 
revival  of  art,  of  literature,  and  of  research  through- 
out Europe ;  all  the  nascent  movements  in  science  and 
in  political  philosophy  which  implied,  as  we  shall  see 
later,  although  men  did  not  know  it  at  the  time,  the 
beginning  of  the  separation  of  the  theory  of  the  State 
from  the  principles  of  ethics  and  religion  ;  were  re- 
sults destined,  each  and  all,  to  contribute  their  mean- 
ing later  in  the  developing  process  of  our  civilisation. 
But  we  have  in  none  of  these  things,  as  yet,  the  life- 
principle  of  the  movement  which  is  to  carry  the  world 
forward  into  that  stage  of  development  towards  the 
brink  of  which  it  has  now  advanced.  The  revival  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  ancient  civilisations  ;  the  discov- 
ery of  the  world  of  which  Columbus  had  dreamed  ;  the 

ing  only  of  carrying  forward  the  process  at  work  in  our  civilisation,  by 
entirely  closing  that  characteristic  antithesis  which  we  have  throughout 
regarded  as  the  evolutionary  cause  which  divides  the  significance  of 
our  era  from  that  of  all  the  past  history  of  the  race. 


304  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

outlook  on  that  infinite  universe  which  the  works  and 
theories  of  Copernicus,  Bruno,  and  Galileo  had  already 
brought  within  range  of  the  human  imagination  ;  the 
printing  press  which  was  soon  to  spread  rapidly  the 
new  tendencies  in  knowledge  from  mind  to  mind  ;  — 
were  all  influences  in  Western  thought  powerfully 
stimulative  of  change.  But  all  these  principles  and 
phases  of  human  activity  were  but  secondary  and 
contributory.  We  have  to  look  elsewhere  to  see  the 
real  forces  of  the  revolution  which  is  destined  to  carry 
our  civilisation  forward  into  its  next  stage,  slowly 
gathering  round  their  life-centre. 

Now  it  will  be  remembered  that  in  a  previous 
chapter  we  found  the  characteristic  and  distinctive 
feature  of  the  inner  life  of  the  system  of  religious 
belief  associated  with  our  civilisation,  to  consist  in  a 
single  fact  which  differentiated  it  from  all  other  sys- 
tems of  belief  whatever  which  had  preceded  it.  There 
had  been  opened  in  the  human  mind  the  terms  of  a 
profound  antithesis  which  presented  certain  constant 
and  characteristic  features  under  all  conditions.  It 
was  an  antithesis,  we  saw,  which  was  not  capable  of 
being  bridged  again  in  any  terms  of  the  individual's 
own  nature,  or  by  any  principle  operating  within  the 
limits  of  merely  political  consciousness. 

The  profound  evolutionary  significance  of  the  con- 
cepts upon  which  this  antithesis  rested,  in  the  cosmic 
drama  in  which  the  controlling  principles  of  the  evo- 
lutionary process  were  being  projected  out  of  the 
present  in  Western  history,  was  apparent.  And  the 
fact  may  be  recalled  that,  stripped  of  their  theological 
garb,  we  saw  nearly  all  the  doctrines  which  the  early 
Councils  of  the  new  religion  recognised  and  con- 


IX  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        305 

clemned  as  heresies  were  capable  of  being  reduced  to 
a  single  meaning.  They  nearly  all  represented,  as 
we  observed,  the  attempt,  under  one  form  or  another, 
to  weaken  or  attenuate  the  terms  or  the  meaning  of 
this  profound  antithesis. 

Nothing  can  be  more  striking,  therefore,  to  the 
evolutionist  than  the  spectacle  which  is  presented 
when,  with  these  facts  in  mind,  and  with  the  nature 

-» 

of  the  problem  towards  which  the  human  mind  is 
advancing  in  Western  history  clearly  before  him,  he 
turns  now  from  the  outward  events  of  the  Renais- 
sance to  the  real  centre  around  which  the  forces  were 
gathering  that  were  to  set  in  motion  that  revolution 
the  stress  and  conflict  of  which  were  to  fill  the  cen- 
turies in  the  future.  From  whatever  point  the  reli- 
gious upheaval  of  the  sixteenth  century  is  approached 
it  is  the  same  fact  which  meets  the  observer.  After 
an  interval  of  more  than  a  thousand  years  it  is,  he 
sees,  round  the  terms  of  the  same  antithesis  that  fierce 
religious  conflict  has  again  begun  to  be  waged.  It  is 
upon  the  conditions  in  which  it  is  alleged  that  the 
meaning  of  this  antithesis  has  become  obscured  or 
obliterated  —  in  a  development  in  which  a  rule  of 
religion  claiming  to  represent  absolute  truth  is  tend- 
ing to  become  again  a  rule  of  law  resting  ultimately 
on  force  throughout  the  world  —  that  the  religious 
consciousness  has  once  more  become  concentrated. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  of  this  fact  as  the  mind 
follows  closely  the  characteristic  features  of  the  reli- 
gious revolution  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Amid  the 
scholastic  gloom  of  the  monasteries  of  North  Ger- 
many ;  among  the  homes  of  the  Swiss  Cantons  ;  in  the 
furtive  meetings  of  the  wandering  artisans  of  the  cities 


306  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

of  the  empire  ;  among  the  Swabian  peasants  and  the 
Netherlandian  burghers  ; l  nay,  even  in  the  shadow  of 
the  Curia  itself,  among  the  members  of  the  "  Oratory 
of  Divine  Love ; "  2  the  question  to  which  the  atten- 
tion of  men  was  again  directed  was  the  character  of 
the  profound  antithesis  opened  in  the  human  mind 
by  the  concept  of  the  insufficiency  of  human  nature. 
Beneath  all  the  outward  events  of  the  time  it  is,  we 
see,  the  assertion  of  the  conviction  of  the  absolute 
impossibility  of  bridging  that  antithesis  in  any  terms 
of  the  sufficiency  of  human  nature  itself  which  has 
begun  once  more  to  move  towards  its  outward  expres- 
sion in  Western  history. 

Looking  therefore  beneath  the  surface  of  the  vast, 
tumultuous,  and  gloomy  world  in  which  the  movement 
known  in  history  as  the  Reformation  was  in  progress, 
the  first  matter  which  attracts  attention  is  the  nature 
of  the  problem  upon  which  the  Western  mind  had 
begun  to  concentrate  itself.  At  the  very  heart  of  the 
organised  ecclesiastical  dominion,  which  for  nearly  a 
thousand  years  had,  throughout  Western  Europe, 
represented  the  greatest  absolutism  within  which  the 
human  spirit  had  ever  been  confined,  there  had  been 
opened  a  vast  controversy.  The  underlying  problem 
presented  itself  under  a  number  of  phases.  On  either 
side  of  it  all  the  principal  powers  and  forces  repre- 
sented in  our  civilisation  —  all  the  jealousies  and 
ambitions  of  the  rising  nationalities  of  Europe,  all  the 
resurgent  activities  of  the  Western  mind  now  repre- 
sented in  the  Renaissance  —  were  soon  to  become 

1  Cf.  History  of  the  Christian  Church,  vol.  iii.  1517-1648,  Wilhelm 
Moeller;   trs.  J.  H.  Freese,  ist,  2nd,  and  3d  divisions. 

2  Cf.  Ranke's  History  of  the  Popes,  ii.  §  I. 


IX  THE  GREAT   ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        307 

involved.  But  of  the  nature  of  the  life-centre,  around 
which  all  the  accessory  elements  of  conflict  were  in 
the  last  resort  to  centre,  there  can  be  no  doubt  from 
the  beginning. 

The  dispute  as  to  the  position  of  the  Church  in  our 
civilisation  was  related,  we  may  perceive,  in  all  its 
essential  significance  to  one  principal  fact.  This  was 
the  conviction  slowly  settling  upon  the  minds  of  a 
party  throughout  our  Western  world,  that  in  that 
development  of  doctrine  which  had  organised  the 
Church,  as  the  representative  of  absolute  truth,  into 
a  world-power  coextensive  with  the  State  and  resting 
ultimately  on  force  —  and  by  which,  therefore,  the  re- 
ligious position  of  the  State,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of 
the  individual,  on  the  other,  were  made  dependent  on 
the  observance  of  the  Church's  authority  and  ordi- 
nances—  the  meaning  of  that  profoundly  significant 
antithesis  opened  in  the  human  mind,  by  which  the 
individual  sense  of  responsibility  was  projected  beyond 
the  meaning  of  all  systems  of  authority  expressing 
themselves  through  the  present,  had  tended,  in  some 
manner,  to  become  obscured  or  obliterated. 

It  is  accordingly,  the  evolutionist  notes  with  inter- 
est, upon  the  concepts  through  which  this  antithesis 
is  again  tending  to  be  expressed  in  its  most  extreme 
and  uncompromising  terms,  that  we  see  the  mind  of 
the  party  representing  the  movement  known  in  history 
as  the  Reformation  concentrating  itself  through  the 
stress  of  the  sixteenth  century.1  It  is,  for  instance, 
the  theological  concepts  of  "  the  insufficiency  of 
human  nature,"  of  "the  absolute  incapacity  of  the 
natural  man  for  good,"  of  "reconciliation,"  and  of 

1  Cf.  History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  by  Kuno  Fischer,  v. 


308  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

"justification  by  faith"  as  opposed  to  the  prevailing 
doctrine  of  "justification  by  works,"  that  we  continu- 
ally encounter  through  all  the  fierce  controversies  of 
the  period. 

As  the  observer  reads  between  the  lines  in  the 
controversies  of  the  time  he  readily  grasps  the  nature 
of  the  situation  with  which  the  Western  mind  is  grad- 
ually closing,  as  it  rises  at  last  to  a  full  view  of  the 
dimensions  of  the  problem  we  saw  gradually  unfold- 
ing itself  in  the  last  chapter.  Looking  back  over  the 
development  which  has  taken  place,  it  may  be  noticed 
with  what  inherent  inevitableness  the  steps  appear  to 
have  followed  each  other.  From  the  concept  that 
what  is  known  as  the  spiritual  welfare  of  the  world  is 
of  more  importance  than  its  temporal  interests  there 
proceeded,  as  we  saw,  the  ideal,  apparently  inherent 
in  it,  of  the  subordination  of  all  the  powers  and  pur- 
poses of  the  political  State  to  the  aims  of  the  reli- 
gious consciousness.  In  the  effort  to  realise  this  ideal 
there  arose,  therefore,  the  long  struggle  between  the 
head  of  the  State  and  the  head  of  the  Church  which 
resulted  —  apparently  with  the  same  inevitableness  — 
in  the  definition  of  the  latter  as  the  ultimate  authority 
in  directing  the  powers  and  purposes  of  the  State  in 
subordination  to  spiritual  ends.  Of  the  same  inherent 
necessity  there  followed  the  exaltation  of  the  Church 
over  all  civil  authority  whatever.  And  now,  in  the 
final  stage  of  the  ideal  —  that  in  which,  therefore,  the 
State  is  conceived  as  dependent  for  its  authority,  and 
the  individual  for  his  religious  position,  upon  the 
authority  and  the  ordinances  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness, as  organised  in  a  universal  Church  in 
which  a  rule  of  religion  necessarily  tends  to  become 


IX  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        309 

again  a  rule  of  civil  law  —  the  chain  of  sequences  is 
complete.  The  human  mind  is  to  all  appearance  still 
involved  in  the  ascendency  of  the  present ;  still  im- 
prisoned within  the  closed  circle  of  the  State,  and  in 
a  tyranny  greater  than  has  ever  prevailed  in  the  world 
before. 

It  is,  therefore,  the  evolutionist  sees,  the  profound 
sense  of  some  inherent  contradiction  between  the 
condition  of  the  religious  consciousness  as  it  has 
become  thus  organised  throughout  the  world,  and 
the  essential  meaning  of  the  antithesis  opened  in 
the  individual  mind  whereby  the  sense  of  human 
responsibility  tends  to  be  projected  beyond  all  sys- 
tems of  authority  whatever,  expressing  themselves 
through  the  present,  which  gives  to  the  concepts  of 
the  movement  now  in  progress  throughout  the 
Western  world  that  distinctive  and  characteristic 
meaning  which  they  may  be  perceived  to  possess. 

The  closer  we  look  at  the  position  involved  the 
more  striking  does  the  nature  of  the  situation  now 
developing  in  Europe  appear  to  the  mind.  The 
observer  here,  as  in  a  previous  chapter,  will  do  well 
to  put  aside  all  questions  as  to  the  place  of  particular 
organisations  of  the  religious  consciousness  in  the 
controversy  in  progress.  The  real  problem  involved 
is,  he  sees,  one  of  the  development  of  the  religious 
consciousness  itself.  It  proceeds  directly  from  the 
nature  of  the  great  antinomy  being  gradually  defined 
in  the  world,  in  which  the  controlling  meaning  of  the 
evolutionary  process  is  tending  to  be  ultimately  pro- 
jected beyond  the  present.  It  is  a  problem  there- 
fore which  has  become  developed,  step  by  step,  in 
Western  history  as  the  human  mind  has  slowly 


310  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

closed  with  the  cosmic  concept,  that  what  it  has 
come  to  know  as  its  spiritual  welfare  is  of  more  im- 
portance than  its  temporal  interests.  The  solution 
is,  as  yet,  far  beyond  the  vision  of  the  disputants  on 
either  side.  Throughout  the  whole  of  the  contro- 
versy of  the  period  we  see,  indeed,  the  question  at 
issue  presenting  itself  to  various  minds  as  if  it  in- 
volved nothing  more  than  the  claims  of  particular 
organisations  of  the  religious  consciousness  to 
authoritatively  represent  the  system  of  belief  asso- 
ciated with  our  civilisation.  But  the  problem  to  be 
solved  involves,  of  necessity,  the  release  into  the 
world  of  a  principle  inherent  in  that  system  of  belief 
which  transcends  the  terms  of  such  a  controversy ;  a 
principle  destined  to  carry  the  human  mind  forward 
towards  a  new  synthesis  of  knowledge,  nay,  towards 
such  a  conception  of  the  nature  of  absolute  truth 
itself,  which  has  not,  as  yet,  dawned  on  the  minds  of 
any  of  the  parties  involved. 

As  we  follow  the  movement  in  progress  in  the 
world,  we  see,  therefore,  how  that  it  continues  to  be 
carried  forward  in  one  direction  by  the  same  inherent 
momentum  proceeding  from  the  system  of  ideas  of 
which  the  development  was  traced  in  the  last  chapter. 
The  concepts  of  the  movement  known  as  the  Refor- 
mation, which  endeavoured  to  project  the  sense  of 
individual  responsibility  beyond  the  principle  of 
authority  now  conceived  as  resident  in  the  organised 
Church,  were  in  their  very  nature  incompatible  with 
the  ideal  which  had  come  to  hold  the  mind  of  the 
world.  The  leaders  of  the  revolution  in  reality 
challenged  the  very  life-principle,  of  that  ideal.  The 
concepts  which  they  represented  could,  we  see  now, 


IX  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND  STAGE        311 

never  be  reconciled  with  it.  The  position  which  the 
movement  of  the  Reformation  involved  could,  in 
short,  from  its  essential  nature,  and  from  the  begin- 
ning, only  be  recognised  as  a  movement  of  rebellion 
striking  at  the  root  of  that  principle  of  authority 
around  which  the  ideal  of  the  Church  had  come  to  be 
organised.1 

Slowly,  therefore,  but  with  clear  and  consistent 
purpose,  we  see  the  organised  Church,  through  all 
the  long  series  of  events  which  led  up  to  and  which 
followed  the  Council  of  Trent,  moving  towards  the 
application  of  that  principle  which  had  been  inherent 
from  the  beginning  in  the  ideal  in  which  a  rule  of 
religion  was  destined  to  become  again  a  rule  of  law 
supported  in  the  last  resort  by  civil  authority.  The 
Church,  in  short,  braced  itself  in  the  supreme  crisis 
now  approaching  in  Western  civilisation  to  the  ap- 
plication of  force  —  of  force  universal  and  irresistible, 
applied  now  through  all  those  secular  instruments  of 
the  State  which,  as  a  first  principle  of  its  position,  it 
regarded  as  existing  throughout  Christendom  in  or- 
ganised subordination  to  its  own  purposes  and  ends. 

With  the  history  of  the  Church  during  the  latter 
half  of  the  sixteenth  century  and  the  first  half  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  that  long-drawn-out  phase  of 
human  development  represented  in  the  first  period  of 
our  era  passes  towards  its  culmination.  Throughout 
the  whole  of  Western  Europe  —  in  the  affairs  of  the 
empire,  in  the  history  of  Italy,  of  Germany,  of 
Spain,  and  of  France,  and  in  the  development  in 

1  Compare  the  position  of  the  emperor  up  to  1541,  e.g.  Ranke's 
History  of  the  Popes,  b.  ii.  §  2,  and  Mueller's  History  of  the  Christian 
Church,  vol.  iii.  d.  i.  chap.  vi. 


312  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

progress  in  England,  in  Scotland,  and  in  the  Scandi- 
navian countries  —  the  battle  which  was  waged 
round  that  ideal  which  had  hitherto  controlled  the 
mind  of  the  world,  slowly  broadened  out  into  a 
single,  clearly  defined  issue.  That  issue  implied  the 
attempt  to  enforce  the  authority  of  the  Church  with 
all  the  powers  of  the  secular  State,  and  all  the  organ- 
ised machinery  of  that  secular  world  of  which  the 
Church  had  obtained  control.  From  the  election  in 
1519  of  the  Emperor  Charles  V.,  who  regarded  him- 
self as  called  to  the  imperial  office  by  divine  appoint- 
ment as  champion  and  protector  of  the  Church  in  the 
crisis  upon  which  it  had  entered,  to  the  end  of  the 
Thirty  Years'  War  in  1649,  tnat  *s  to  sav>  f°r  a 
period  of  130  years,  only  one  prime  issue  underlay 
the  political  life  of  Western  Europe.  In  that  period 
of  almost  incessant  war  a  multitude  of  class,  of  per- 
sonal, and  of  national  ambitions  sought  to  obtain 
ends  of  their  own  amid  the  clash  of  arms  and  the 
continuous  stress  of  diplomacy.  But  there  can  never 
be  at  any  time  a  doubt  as  to  the  real  nature  of  the 
world-embracing  struggle  which  was  in  progress 
beneath  the  surface  of  events.  In  the  international 
conflict  of  the  counter-Reformation,  in  the  States  in 
which  the  Revolution  had  gained  a  firm  footing,  the 
Church  organised,  inspired,  and  directed  to  the  full 
extent  of  its  powers  the  secular  forces  of  the  world 
against  the  rebellion  in  its  corporate  aspect.  In  the 
conflict  with  the  individual  States  it  placed  its  rebels 
outside  the  pale  of  legality.  It  excommunicated  the 
rulers ;  it  absolved  the  subjects  from  allegiance  to 
government.  Within  the  borders  of  the  States 
themselves  it  carried  the  same  warfare  to  its  utmost 


IX  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND  STAGE        313 

limits  against  the  individual ;  looking  always,  in  the 
open  processes  of  its  hostility  as  in  the  secret  courts 
of  the  Inquisition,  to  the  secular  arm  of  the  civil  law 
to  execute  its  judgments  against  those  whom  it 
branded  as  heretics  and  rebels. 

The  development  which  had  taken  place  in  our 
civilisation  had,  in  short,  reached  its  last  logical  out- 
come. The  conditions  of  a  past  era  of  evolution,  in 
which  the  controlling  centre  of  religious  conscious- 
ness was  still  in  the  present,  and  in  which  it  was, 
therefore,  considered  that  the  transgression  of  a  re- 
ligious ordinance  should  be  punished  by  civil  penal- 
ties, had  survived  into  the  new  era.  But  under  the 
forms  of  our  civilisation,  and  as  the  great  antinomy 
represented  therein  had  gradually  defined  itself,  the 
old  conditions  had  become  instinct  with  a  tyranny  of 
which  the  human  mind  had  never  before  dreamed. 
For  the  policy  of  the  Church,  it  must  be  perceived, 
was  dictated  throughout  with  an  absolute  and  un- 
changing belief  that,  as  the  spiritual  welfare  of  the 
world  was  of  greater  importance  than  temporal  in- 
terests, so  the  aims  of  the  absolutism  which  it  repre- 
sented outweighed  every  other  interest  with  which  it 
was  confronted.  Its  warfare  was  waged,  therefore, 
the  evolutionist  sees,  not  in  the  spirit  the  controver- 
sialist often  still  speaks  of  it  as  having  been  waged, 
but,  even  under  the  darkest  phases  of  the  Inquisition, 
with  a  deep,  concentrated,  and  steadfast  determina- 
tion, with  an  intense  devotion,  with  a  self-sacrificing 
and  all-consuming  zeal  on  the  part  of  its  chosen  in- 
struments, which  is  probably  without  any  parallel  on 
so  great  a  scale  in  human  history. 

Even  at  this  distance  of  time  it  is  not  possible  for 


314  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  nature  of  the  part  which  has  been  played  in  that 
development  by  the  military  peoples  of  the  world  to 
altogether  escape  the  attention  of  the  observer. 
Over  the  peoples  of  Southern  Europe  the  movement 
known  as  the  Reformation  passed,  leaving  in  the  end 
scarcely  a  trace.1  We  must  probably  go  farther  than 
Hegel's  explanation  for  the  causes  from  which  this 
result  proceeded.2  There  were  probably  many  causes. 
But  prominent  among  them  a  place  must  be  given  to 
one  which  goes  deeper  than  those  usually  mentioned 
by  historians,  and  to  which,  in  all  probability,  other 
causes  were  related ;  namely,  the  abiding  effect  pro- 
duced on  the  whole  fabric  of  the  social  and  intellec- 
tual life  of  the  Southern  peoples  by  the  closer  contact 
which  they  had  undergone  with  the  ideals  of  that 
epoch  of  human  evolution  represented  by  the  life  of 
the  Roman  empire  and  the  spirit  of  the  ancient  civili- 
sations. Under  these  ideals  the  instinct  to  see  the 
deeper  principles  of  society  in  that  complex  and  anti- 
thetical aspect,  in  which  all  the  phenomena  of  the 
social  and  religious  development  of  a  world  passing 
out  from  under  the  control  of  the  hitherto  ascendant 
present,  must  of  necessity  present  themselves  to  the 
human  mind,  had  obtained  little  room  for  develop- 
ment. The  Latin  mind  tended,  therefore,  in  all 
probability,  to  see  truth  —  as,  indeed,  it  still  tends 
to  see  it  —  only  in  that  more  readily  comprehensible, 
but  also  more  elementary  aspect  in  which  it  appears 
to  be  compressed  into  the  severely  consistent  and 
logical  forms  which  are,  in  reality,  related  to  the  gov- 
erning principles  of  an  earlier  era  of  human  evolution. 

1  Cf.  Moeller,  Hist,  of  Chr.  Church,  vol.  iii.  d.  iii.  and  v. 

2  Cf.  Philosophy  of  History,  by  G.  W.  F.  Hegel,  pt.  iv.  sec.  iii.  chap.  I. 


ix  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        315 

But  when  it  became  a  question  of  enforcing  this 
instinct  of  the  Latin  mind  against  the  more  Northern 
peoples,  we  see  how  significant  became  again  the 
part  played  by  the  military  races  of  the  North  in  con- 
tinuing to  hold  the  stage  of  history  as  the  cosmic 
drama,  in  which  the  ascendency  of  the  present  was 
being  challenged,  continued  to  unfold  itself  in  our 
civilisation.  In  the  Latin  countries  of  Italy  and 
Spain  the  revolution  was  soon  entirely  suppressed 
by  the  unsparing  use  of  force,  —  this  end  being  the 
more  rapidly  attained  as  the  movement  in  these 
countries  had  found  little  general  support  among  the 
people,  and  was  from  the  beginning  almost  limited 
to  the  more  educated  and  inquiring  classes.  In 
France,  after  a  brief  and  desperate  period  of  opposi- 
tion, punctuated  by  the  Huguenot  wars,  the  massacre 
of  St.  Bartholomew,  and  the  events  which  were  to 
lead  up  to  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  the 
same  result  followed.  It  was  in  Germany  first,  and 
in  England  afterwards,  that  the  movement  rocked  and 
swayed  in  terrible  convulsions  round  its  life-centre, 
and  that  the  era  of  successful  resistance,  based  on 
military  force,  passed  gradually  outwards  towards  a 
new  world-era  in  development. 

By  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  issue 
of  the  struggle  had  been  decided  in  Western  Europe. 
Driven  by  an  instinct,  the  reach  and  depth  of  which 
the  Western  mind  even  as  yet  but  dimly  understands, 
we  see  the  human  spirit,  in  the  midst  of  the  stress  of 
a  century  and  a  half  of  world-shaking  conflict,  achiev- 
ing the  definition,  in  more  uncompromising  terms 
than  it  had  ever  before  been  stated,  of  the  antinomy 
which  had  been  opened  in  history.  Centuries  are 


316  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

yet  to  pass  before  the  real  meaning  of  the  profoundly 
significant  transition  which  has  been  accomplished  is 
destined  to  fully  permeate  the  religious  consciousness 
of  our  civilisation.  Whole  periods  of  thought  are 
destined  yet  to  develop  and  to  pass,  before  the  rela- 
tionship, to  every  phase  of  social  evolution  included 
under  the  head  of  modern  progress,  of  the  cause 
which  had  thus  begun  to  project  the  controlling  prin- 
ciples of  the  religious  consciousness  beyond  the 
theory  of  the  State,  beyond  the  widest  limits  of  po- 
litical consciousness,  beyond  all  the  forms  and  princi- 
ples under  which  the  ascendency  of  the  present  had 
hitherto  expressed  itself,  is  to  be  clearly  grasped  by 
the  Western  intellect.  But  the  first  great  crisis  in 
Western  history  in  which  this  transition  is  in  process 
of  accomplishment  has  been  passed. 

Looking  at  the  world  over  which  the  storm  of  the 
Reformation  has  passed,  it  presents  at  first  sight  an 
extraordinary  spectacle  in  the  uncertain  light  of  the 
grey  morning  of  the  modern  world.  Our  Western 
civilisation  has  moved  into  an  epoch  of  which  the 
ruling  principle  is  to  be  entirely  different  from  any 
which  has  ever  prevailed  in  the  world  before.  View- 
ing the  system  of  belief  associated  with  that  civilisa- 
tion—  in  its  aspect  as  a  developmental  principle  in 
history  —  an  immense  interval  is  destined  to  be 
placed  between  its  evolutionary  significance  in  the 
future  and  its  import  as  an  evolutionary  cause  under 
the  principles  which  had  prevailed  in  the  past.  Yet 
looking  out  over  Europe  immediately  after  the  events 
just  described,  it  is  remarkable  to  see  how  profoundly 
unconscious  the  human  mind  remains,  and  is  yet  for 
long  to  remain,  of  the  potentiality  of  principles  under- 


IX  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        317 

lying  the  result  which  has  been  accomplished,  and 
of  the  nature  of  the  goal  towards  which  the  life-pro- 
cesses of  Western  civilisation  have  now  begun  to  be 
carried  rapidly  forward. 

As  we  watch  from  this  point  forward  the  develop- 
ment towards  modern  history  of  the  two  sides  of  the 
antinomy  in  which  the  infinite  future  is  being  slowly 
ranged  in  conflict  through  every  phase  of  human 
activity  with  the  still  ascendant  present  —  and  of 
which  the  ultimate  significance  is  destined  to  be 
the  emancipation  of  the  future  in  such  a  free  conflict 
of  forces  as  has  never  been  in  the  world  before  — 
we  begin  to  have  a  clearer  view  of  the  outlines  of  the 
stupendous  problem  which  has  been  involved  from  the 
beginning  in  the  projection  of  the  centre  of  signifi- 
cance in  the  evolutionary  process  out  of  the  present. 

On  looking  back  over  the  remarkable  position 
which  has  so  far  resulted  from  the  first  contact  in 
Western  history  of  the  human  mind  with  the  concept 
that  what  it  has  come  to  know  as  its  spiritual  welfare 
is  of  more  importance  than  temporal  interests,  we 
see  now  that  there  is  only  one  way  in  which  the 
controlling  principles  of  the  religious  consciousness 
can  be  ultimately  projected  beyond  the  content  of  all 
systems  of  authority  whatever  in  which  the  ascendant 
present  has  hitherto  been  able  to  imprison  the  human 
spirit.  The  Western  mind,  we  begin  to  realise,  is 
destined,  sooner  or  later,  to  rise  to  a  conception  of 
the  nature  of  truth  itself  different  from  any  that  has 
hitherto  prevailed  in  the  world.  It  must  conceive 
truth  at  last,  we  perceive,  as  being  capable  of  being 
correctly  presented  in  the  human  process  in  history, 
only  as  we  see  it  presented  in  all  forms  of  developing 


318  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

life ;  namely,  as  the  net  resultant  of  forces  which 
are  in  themselves  apparently  opposed  and  conflicting. 
Such  a  conception  of  truth  is,  in  reality,  quite 
new  to  the  world.  It  is  entirely  foreign  to  all  those 
conditions  of  mind  which  are  peculiar  to  the  child- 
hood of  the  race,  and  which  still  continue  to  be 
characteristic  of  the  childhood  of  the  individual.  It 
was  a  conception  completely  alien  to  the  genius  of 
the  ancient  civilisations.  Profoundly  as  it  has 
already  come  to  modify,  as  we  shall  see  later,  the 
institutions,  the  deeper  mental  processes,  and  the 
attitude  of  the  religious  consciousness  amongst  those 
peoples  to  whom  the  future  of  the  world,  to  all 
appearance,  now  belongs,  it  still  remains  altogether 
foreign  to  the  vast  majority  of  our  fellow-creatures, 
and  even  to  a  considerable  proportion  of  the  less 
advanced  peoples  included  among  modern  nations. 
But  it  is  to  such  a  conception  of  absolute  truth,  held 
not  simply  as  an  intellectual  principle,  but  as  the 
ultimate  controlling  conviction  of  religious  conscious- 
ness, that  we  see  the  Western  mind  now  about  to  be 
compelled  to  rise,  as  it  begins  at  last  to  move  towards 
that  universal  empire  which  has  been  inherent  in 
Western  civilisation  from  the  beginning  of  our  era  — 
a  universal  empire  in  which  the  future  is  to  be  at 
last  emancipated  in  a  free  and  necessarily  tolerant 
conflict  of  forces ;  but  a  conflict,  nevertheless,  in  the 
stress  of  which  every  cause  and  opinion  and  institu- 
tion is  to  hold  its  life  only  at  the  challenge  of  such 
criticism  and  competition  as  has  never  been  possible 
in  the  world  before.1 

1  Compare  the  position  in  Natural  Rights,  chap,  viii.,  by  D.  G. 
Ritchie,  with  that  in  Schlegel's  Philosophy  of  History  (Robertson),  and 
E.  Caird's  Philosophy  of  Kant,  vol.  ii.  (e.g.  pp.  365-372). 


ix  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        319 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  periods  in  Western 
history  is  that  included  in  the  centuries  which  im- 
mediately followed  the  movement  known  as  the 
Reformation.  It  is  a  period  in  which,  as  has  been 
stated,  we  see  the  mind  of  the  time  still,  to  all 
appearance,  entirely  unconscious  of  the  nature  of 
the  principle  which  had  been  released  into  the  world  ; 
still  moving  within  the  circle  of  the  ideas  hitherto 
ascendant  in  history ;  and  yet,  withal,  being  carried 
irresistibly  forward  towards  a  goal  altogether  different 
from  any  which  had  been  imagined  in  the  past.  By 
nearly  all  historians  these  centuries  are  included  in 
the  modern  period  of  history.  Yet,  strange  as  it 
may  seem  to  many  minds,  in  any  scientific  division 
of  the  periods  of  our  civilisation  they  belong,  strictly 
speaking,  to  the  pre-Reformation  epoch  of  history. 
In  almost  every  country  in  which  the  new  form  of 
doctrine  attained  to  ascendency  the  first  result  was 
the  same.  Its  adherents  immediately  attempted  to 
associate  it  with  the  State,  and  to  enforce  through 
the  organisation  of  civil  government  the  new  inter- 
pretation of  truth. 

Looking  first  to  Germany,  the  spectacle  which  is 
presented  to  view  is  of  the  deepest  interest.  In 
almost  every  part  of  that  country  in  which  the  move- 
ment of  the  Reformation  triumphed  the  same  result 
followed.  We  see  the  party  representing  that  move- 
ment conceiving  itself  now  in  turn  as  the  representa- 
tive of  absolute  truth  ;  and,  therefore,  setting  out 
almost  from  the  beginning  with  its  face,  to  all 
appearance,  directed  towards  exactly  the  same  goal 
that  the  organised  Church  had  reached  in  Europe 
through  that  long  development  of  the  centuries 


32O  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

already  described.  In  the  numerous  Church  com- 
munities 1  early  formed  in  North  Germany  on  the 
model  of  the  Brunswick  Church  Ordinances,  the 
affairs  of  the  Church  from  the  beginning  were  con- 
sidered as  forming  part  of  the  various  city  adminis- 
trations. Later  on,  as  the  movement  developed,  we 
see  the  reigning  princes  of  the  German  States  which 
accepted  the  Reformation  following  in  the  same 
direction ;  and,  as  a  matter  of  course,  taking  their 
places  in  the  Church  as  organisers  and  administra- 
tors of  its  affairs.2  Everywhere  we  appear  to  see 
the  new  movement  endeavouring  to  follow  the  same 
principle  of  the  past ;  identifying  the  ecclesiastical 
organisation  with  the  civil  community,  attempting 
the  suppression  of  what  are  considered  to  be  false 
views,  and  the  punishment  of  offenders ;  and  always, 
in  so  doing,  seeking,  as  a  matter  of  course,  as  in  the 
days  of  the  Carlovingian  empire,  to  make  the  civil 
authority  the  executive  organ  of  the  ecclesiastical 
community.3  By  the  religious  peace  of  1648  we 
have  the  ius  reformandi  given  to  the  civil  govern- 
ments in  Germany,  and  the  association  and  amalga- 
mation of  the  powers  of  the  sovereign  and  the 
Church  duly  recognised  in  practice.4 

In  Switzerland  we  have  in  view  a  still  more 
remarkable  spectacle.  In  the  German  States  the 
tendency  had  been,  throughout  the  progress  of  the 
Reformation  movement,  for  the  authorities  and 
reigning  princes  to  assume  episcopal  authority  in  a 

1  Moeller,  Hist,  of  Chr.  Church,  vol.  iii.  divs.  i.  and  iv. 

2  Ibid.  3  Ibid. 

4  Cf.  Transactions  of  the  Rhenish  Provincial  Synod,  1844,  trans,  in 
Constitution  of  the  Church  of  the  Future,  by  C.  C.  J.  Bunsen. 


IX  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        321 

Church  organisation  still  considered  as  episcopal. 
But  in  Switzerland  the  tendency  was  towards  the 
forms  of  a  republic  in  the  new  religious  communities. 
Yet,  here  again,  the  identification  of  the  rule  of  the 
Church  with  the  civil  law  of  the  community  was 
accepted  as  a  matter  beyond  question.  Nay,  it  was 
soon  made  even  more  complete  than  in  the  German 
States.  We  see  Calvin  demanding  from  the  civil 
authority  in  Switzerland  the  recognition  of  the 
Church's  order  of  discipline ;  and  we  watch  the 
gradual  development  in  the  city  of  Geneva,  towards 
the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  of  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  examples  of  a  theocracy  under  the 
forms  of  ecclesiastical  republicanism  that  has  ever 
existed  in  the  world.1 

Under  the  rule  of  the  civil  authorities  but  one  true 
faith  was  tolerated  in  Geneva.  The  strictest  inquisi- 
tion was  maintained  into  the  private  life  and  morals 
of  the  citizens.  Any  falling  away  from  the  true  faith 
was  counted  a  crime  against  the  State.  Convicted 
heretics  were  punished  by  civil  authority.  Revolt, 
like  that  of  Ami  Perrin,  was  visited  with  the  utmost 
severity.  For  theological  heterodoxy  like  that  of 
Servetus  the  punishment  was  death  at  the  stake,  with 
Calvin's  approval.  Calvin,  in  short,  to  quote  the 
words  of  an  accepted  authority,  "  pressed  for 
the  severest  penal  laws  possible,  and  the  merci- 
less execution  of  the  same  :  pious  authorities  must 
be  strict.  Within  five  years  fifty-eight  death  sen- 
tences and  seventy-six  banishments  were  carried  out 
amongst  the  inhabitants  of  Geneva,  who  numbered 
about  20,000.  .  .  .  The  Consistory  performed  the 

1  Cf.  Moeller,  //is/,  of  C/tr.  Church,  vol.  iii.  cliv.  ii.  chap.  ii. 
Y 


322  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

functions  of  a  keen  police  board  of  morals,  exercising 
a  strict  watch,  and  acting  on  Calvin's  principle,  that 
it  is  better  that  many  innocent  persons  should  be  pun- 
ished than  that  one  guilty  person  should  remain 
unpunished."  l 

Throughout  Northern  Europe  the  development 
continued  with  unabated  pace.  In  Sweden  dis- 
senters were  banished  by  the  civil  authorities.  The 
duty  of  the  civil  power  to  punish  heretics  was  ex- 
pressed in  the  Swiss,  Scottish,  and  Belgic  "Confes- 
sions" of  the  new  movement.  Even  the  Anabaptists, 
mentioned  towards  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury by  Bossuet  as  one  of  the  only  two  bodies  of 
Christians  then  known  to  him  which  did  not  main- 
tain the  right  of  the  civil  magistrate  to  punish  false 
doctrine,2  turned  naturally  to  force  for  the  suppres- 
sion of  religious  error  in  that  disastrous  experiment 
at  government  in  Miinster  which  Karl  Pearson  has  so 
graphically  though  characteristically  described.3  The 
ideas  underlying  the  experiment  of  Calvin  in  Geneva 
profoundly  impressed,  as  time  went  on,  the  religious 
life  of  Western  Europe.4  In  England  they  were  for 

1  Cf.  Moeller,  Hist,  of  Chr.  Church,  vol.  iii.  div.  ii.  chap.  ii. 

2  Hist.  Variat.  Protestantes,  liv.  x.  chap.  56  ;   cf.  Lecky's  Europ.  Rail. 
vol.  ii.  53. 

8  Ethic  of  Free  Thought,  by  Karl  Pearson,  pp.  263-313;  cf.  Moeller, 
Hist,  of  Chr.  Church,  vol.  iii.  div.  i.  chap.  v.  p.  4. 

*  "  Calvin,"  as  Mr.  Morley  has  said,  "  shaped  the  mould  in  which  the 
bronze  of  Puritanism  was  cast.  That  commanding  figure,  of  such  vast 
power,  yet  somehow  with  so  little  lustre,  by  his  unbending  will,  his 
pride,  his  severity,  his  French  spirit  of  system,  his  gift  for  government, 
for  legislation,  for  dialectic  in  every  field,  his  incomparable  industry  and 
persistence,  had  conquered  a  more  than  pontifical  ascendency  in  the 
Protestant  world.  He  meets  us  in  England,  as  in  Scotland,  Holland, 
France,  Switzerland,  and  the  rising  England  across  the  Atlantic.  He 


IX  THE   GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        323 

a  period  paramount.1  In  Scotland,  under  the  influence 
of  Knox,  they  became  the  basis  of  that  severe,  consist- 
ent, ecclesiastical  republicanism  which  moved  Moeller 
to  admiration  ; 2  in  which  the  ideal  of  the  State  from 
the  beginning  was  a  theocracy  of  the  sternest  type ; 
in  which  the  civil  law  was  the  arm  of  the  Church 
against  offenders  ;  and  in  which  the  authorities  were 
expected  to  purge  the  State  of  false  doctrine  after  the 
manner  of  the  pious  kings  of  Israel.3  And  this  even 
while  at  the  same  time  —  as  during  the  greater  part 
of  the  reign  of  the  Stuarts  —  there  was,  at  the  insti- 
gation of  the  Scotch  bishops  (themselves  representing 
the  Reformation  movement  in  another  phase),  directed 
against  the  very  doctrines  upon  which  this  ideal 
rested,  a  persecution  which  left  its  mark  deep  on  the 
Scottish  mind  and  character,  in  which  the  Presbyte- 
rians were  hunted  and  tortured  by  the  civil  power, 
and  transported  as  criminals  to  the  Barbados.4 

died  (1564)  a  generation  before  Cromwell  was  born,  but  his  influence 
was  still  at  its  height.  Nothing  less  than  to  create  in  man  a  new  nature 
was  his  far-reaching  aim,  to  regenerate  character,  to  simplify  and  con- 
solidate religious  faith.  His  scheme  comprehended  a  doctrine  that 
went  to  the  very  root  of  man's  relations  with  the  scheme  of  universal 
things  ;  a  Church  order  as  closely  compacted  as  that  of  Rome  ;  a  sys- 
tem of  moral  discipline  as  concise  and  as  imperative  as  the  code  of 
Napoleon.  He  built  it  all  upon  a  certain  theory  of  the  government  of 
the  universe,  which  by  his  agency  has  exerted  an  amazing  influence 
upon  the  world  "  (Oliver  Cromwell,  by  Right  Hon.  John  Morley). 

1  "  In  England,  at  the  end  of  Elizabeth's  reign,"  says  Professor 
Gardiner,  "the  doctrines  taught  and  accepted  by  the  vast  majority  of 
that  part  of  the  clergy  which  was  in  any  real  sense  of  the  word  religious, 
was  Calvinistic  "  (Constitutional  Documents  of  the  Puritan  Revolution, 
Intro,  xx.). 

a  Hist,  of  the  Chr.  Church,  vol.  iii.  p.  3  ;  2nd  div.  chap.  ii. ;  and  4th 
div.  chap.  iv.  8  //n't/,  vol.  iii.  5th  div.  chap.  iii. 

*  The  Rise  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,  vol.  ii.  p.  41. 


324  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

But  it  was  in  England  that  the  tendency  reached 
its  freest  and  most  characteristic  development.  Here 
the  forces,  representing  the  new  ideas,  armed  them- 
selves almost  from  the  beginning  with  civil  power. 
This  was  used  at  first  against  those  supporting  the 
pre-Reformation  principles.  But  soon  the  forces  rep- 
resenting the  various  tendencies  within  the  post- 
Reformation  development  entered  in  England  upon 
a  struggle  amongst  themselves  of  altogether  excep- 
tional bitterness,  intensity,  and  duration ;  in  which 
success  from  time  to  time  appeared  to  favour  now 
one  party  and  now  another.  It  became  in  time  such 
a  struggle  of  each  for  mastery  as  has  been  paralleled 
nowhere  else  in  the  world.  Out  of  it,  at  the  end  of 
a  prolonged  period  of  profound  political  and  religious 
convulsion,  there  began  to  emerge  slowly  into  the 
sight  of  men  the  principle  of  a  new  epoch  of  human 
evolution  ;  that  ruling  principle  which,  in  a  scientific 
division  of  Western  time,  will  in  future  be  seen  to 
divide  the  Middle  Ages  from  the  modern  world. 

For  nearly  two  centuries  beneath  the  shifting  scenes 
of  this  struggle  in  England,  only  one  idea  continued 
to  occupy  the  minds  of  all  the  combatants,  namely, 
the  deadliness  of  the  liberty  of  religious  error,  and  the 
necessity,  therefore,  for  enlisting  the  arm  of  civil 
authority  against  it.  For  140  years,  from  the  pass- 
ing of  the  Act  of  Uniformity  in  1549  to  the  Tolera- 
tion Act  of  1689,  the  statute  book  of  England  presents 
one  of  the  most  extraordinary  records  in  the  history 
of  our  civilisation,  in  the  long  list  of  measures  with 
which  it  armed  the  civil  authority  from  time  to  time 
with  repressive  powers  against  what  the  ruling  party 
for  the  time  being  considered  to  be  false  doctrine. 


ix  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        325 

When  the  combatants  in  the  struggle  in  progress  in 
England  crossed  the  Atlantic  and  sought  a  refuge  for 
their  ideas  in  the  New  England  settlements,  the  prin- 
ciple which  held  men's  minds  still  carried  them  for- 
ward to  the  same  result.  Massachusetts  early  became 
the  centre  of  colonies  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic 
where  the  refugees  endeavoured  to  carry  out  their 
ideas  of  theocratic  States  which  rested,  in  the  last 
resort,  on  exactly  the  same  alliance  —  between  civil 
authority  and  a  particular  interpretation  of  religious 
doctrine  believed  to  be  right  —  as  they  had  left  behind 
them  at  home.  Decidedly  liberal  and  democratic  as 
were  the  refugees'  ideals  at  first,  their  ecclesiastical 
conceptions  soon  turned  in  favour  of  the  enforcement 
of  strict  conformity  to  law  ; l  and  the  right  of  the  civil 
authorities  to  punish  lapses  from  the  accepted  doc- 
trine was  in  time,  in  more  than  one  of  the  New  Eng- 
land colonies,  exercised  with  as  great  severity  as  by 
the  Presbyterians  at  home.2 

In  England  itself  the  stern  logic  of  facts  pro- 
gressed slowly  through  history  to  the  last  analysis, 
in  a  series  of  events  the  evolutionary  significance  of 
which  has  even  as  yet  hardly  reached  the  general 
mind.  As  we  read  between  the  lines  of  the  Grand 
Remonstrance  presented  to  the  king  in  1641,  on  the 
eve  of  the  great  struggle  of  the  civil  war,  we  see  how 
inexorable  were  the  tendencies  of  the  development 
in  which  both  sides  alike  were  caught.  In  the  clauses 
numbered  from  183  to  i87,3  the  aim  of  the  times  is 
most  clearly  set  forth.  It  was  to  secure  the  enforce- 
ment through  the  State,  and  as  against  the  king,  of 

1  Moeller,  I/iit.  of  Chr.  Church,  vol.  iii.  5th  div.  c.  iii.  3  Ibid. 

8  Constitutional  Documents  of  the  Puritan  Reroluticn,  No.  43. 


326  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  religious  opinions  of  the  party  behind  it.  In  the 
words  of  Professor  Gardiner,  "  there  was  to  be  no 
toleration  of  nonconformity,  the  plan  of  the  framers 
of  the  Grand  Remonstrance  was  to  substitute  the 
general  enforcement  of  their  own  form  of  Church 
government  and  worship  for  that  which  had  recently 
been  enforced  by  the  authority  of  the  king  and  the 
bishops."  1 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  of  recent  contributions 
to  our  knowledge  of  the  Cromwellian  period  in  Eng- 
land has  been  made  by  Professor  Gardiner,  in  bring- 
ing to  light  the  single  clue  which,  going  deeper  than 
any  of  the  merely  political  interpretations  of  that 
period,  underlies  all  the  apparently  conflicting  policies 
and  experiments  in  government  undertaken  by  Crom- 
well. "  After  the  violent  dissolution  of  the  Long 
Parliament,"  says  Professor  Gardiner,  "  Cromwell  in 
turn  supported  systems  as  opposed  to  one  another  as 
those  of  the  Nominated  Parliament,  the  Instrument  of 
Government,  arbitrary  rule  with  the  help  of  the  major- 
generals,  the  new  Parliamentary  Constitution  of  the 
Humble  Petition  and  Advice  ;  and  to  all  appearance 
would  have  rallied  to  yet  another  plan  if  his  career 
had  not  been  cut  short  by  death."  Yet  in  all  these 
acts  one  consistent  aim  and  determination  is  traced 
by  Professor  Gardiner.  To  use  his  actual  words : 
"  In  England  the  whole  struggle  against  regal  power 
had  been  carried  on  by  a  minority."  But  in  this 
struggle  what  appeared  to  Cromwell  as  the  one  thing 
necessary  above  all  others,  was  that  "  the  whole  bur- 
den of  government  in  the  interest  of  the  nation  must 

1  Constitutional  Documents  of  the  Puritan  Revolution,  Intro, 
p.  xxxix. 


ix  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        327 

be  entrusted  to  a  minority  composed  of  the  godly  or 
honest  people  of  the  nation,  in  the  hope  that  the 
broad  views  and  beneficent  actions  of  this  minority 
would  in  time  convert  it  into  a  majority.  So  far  as  I 
know,  Cromwell  never  swerved  from  this  view  of  the 
national  requirements.  To  the  end  of  his  life  he 
strove  to  maintain  the  ascendency  of  a  Puritan  oli- 
garchy." 1 

No  one  familiar  with  the  inner  history  of  the  period 
in  question  will  doubt  that  in  this  matter  Professor 
Gardiner  is  right  ;z  and  that,  in  the  statement  of  the 
aim  expressed  in  the  words  here  put  into  italics,  he 
has  correctly  interpreted  the  inner  purpose  of  Crom- 
well. It  was,  in  short,  in  this  purpose  —  the  mainte- 
nance of  an  oligarchy  founded  on  religious  opinion  as 
opposed  to  another  oligarchy  also,  in  the  last  resort, 
founded  on  religious  opinion  —  that  we  have  the 
real  secret  of  the  Cromwellian  epoch  in  England.  It 
was  the  same  aim  which  underlay  alike  the  struggle 
against  the  regal  power  and  the  execution  of  the  king, 
the  purge  of  Parliament,  and  the  scheme  for  the 
government  of  England  through  the  major-generals. 
The  method  varied  from  the  absolutist  standards 
of  the  past  to  what  were  the  forms,  and  at  times 
almost  the  spirit,  of  the  later  principle  of  tolerance 
to  which  men  were  being  compelled  to  rise.  But  it 
was  still  always,  as  yet,  one  clear  ideal — the  ascen- 
dency in  the  State,  and  the  alliance  with  civil  authority, 

1  "  Cromwell's  Constitutional  Aims,"  by  S.  R.  Gardiner,    Contempo- 
rary Kei'iew,  No.  409. 

2  Compare  closely  in   this  connection   the   Document   "  Declaration 
by  the  Lord-General  and  the  Council  on   the  dissolution  of  the   Long 
Parliament"   (Constitutional  Documents  of  the    Puritan    devolution, 
part  v.  No.  95). 


328  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

of  a  system  of  religious  doctrines  believed  to  be  right 
—  which  held  the  mind  even  of  the  parliamentary 
leader  in  this  fateful  turning  period  of  English 
history. 

It  is  absolutely  necessary,  if  we  would  obtain  a 
clear  view  of  the  meaning  of  the  world-process  devel- 
oping beneath  our  eyes,  that  the  existence  of  this 
large  group  of  facts  should  be  kept  well  before  the 
mind,  and  that  its  purport  in  the  development  of  our 
civilisation  should  not  be  missed.  It  would  seem,  if 
the  endeavour  continues  to  be  made  to  preserve  a 
position  of  detachment  from  all  preconceived  ideas, 
that  we  are  confronted  in  history  at  this  point  with  a 
deeper  truth  than  is  to  be  distinguished,  at  first 
sight,  in  any  of  the  controversies  of  the  time.  It  is 
not  the  aspect  of  these  controversies  as  men  were 
regarding  them ;  but  the  development  which  the 
religious  consciousness  is  itself  slowly  undergoing 
beneath  the  events  of  the  time  that  calls  for  atten- 
tion. It  is  the  development  in  which  we  catch  a 
first  distant  glimpse  of  the  only  condition  under 
which  it  is  possible  to  conceive  the  emancipation  of 
the  future  being  accomplished  in  the  evolutionary 
process  in  history  —  the  condition,  that  is  to  say,  in 
which  the  human  mind  is  destined  to  be  compelled  to 
rise  to  a  conception  of  truth  in  which  the  principle  of 
tolerance  is  to  be  held  in  the  only  way  in  which  it 
can  ever  become  permanently  operative  in  the  world, 
namely,  as  an  ultimate  conviction  of  the  religious 
consciousness — which  holds  the  scientific  imagina- 
tion.1 Viewed  in  this  light,  we  see  that  it  was,  in 

1  Compare  Caird's  Philosophy  of  Kant,  pp.  365-372,  with  J.  St.  Loe 
Strachey's  statement  to  the  effect  that  the  essence  of  the  characteristic 


IX  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        329 

reality,  not  so  much  in  the  movement  usually  known 
as  the  Reformation,  as  in  the  development  in  the  two 
centuries  immediately  succeeding  it,  that  a  principle 
which  had  controlled  an  immense  epoch  of  human  his- 
tory, and  which  had  been  projected  into  our  era  from 
an  earlier  stage  of  the  evolutionary  process,  reached 
its  ultimate  phase.  And  it  was  in  this  period  that 
the  operation  of  that  principle  culminated  at  last  in 
the  only  conditions  which  could  prepare  the  way 
for  the  release  into  the  world  of  the  infinite  poten- 
tiality which  had  been  inherent  in  Western  civilisa- 
tion since  the  beginning  of  our  era. 

It  has  been  said  that  in  almost  every  country 
in  which  the  new  form  of  doctrine  triumphed  it  had 
immediately  attempted  to  associate  itself  with  the 
State,  and  to  enforce  once  more,  through  the  organ- 
isation of  civil  government,  its  own  interpretation  of 
absolute  truth.  But  it  is  not  under  this  aspect  alone 
that  we  have  to  watch  the  human  mind  in  the  evolu- 
tionary process  in  Western  history  being  gradually 
driven  step  by  step  from  one  position  to  another ; 
still  ever  looking  back,  still  ever  dreaming  that  it 
was  moving  within  the  circle  of  the  ideals  of  the 
past ;  and  yet,  in  reality,  gradually  but  surely  passing 
out  under  the  control  of  an  entirely  new  ruling  prin- 
ciple in  the  development  of  the  world. 

The  events  which  have  been  here  passed  in  review 
constitute  the  development — every  step  in  which 
may  be  said  to  have  been  inevitable  from  the  begin- 

truth  to  which  the  modern  religious  consciousness  has  advanced  is 
"  that  toleration  is  per  se  a  religious  act,  and  not  a  mere  convention 
based  on  convenience  —  a  course  of  action  founded  on  the  principle  of 
reciprocity"  {Grave  to  Gay,  p.  159). 


33O  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

ning  —  leading  to  the  slow  dissociation  of  the  reli- 
gious consciousness  from  all  ultimate  alliance  with  the 
authority  of  the  State.  But  on  the  other  side  of  the 
process  the  separation  of  civil  authority  —  claiming 
through  the  conception  of  divine  right  in  the  State  — 
from  its  association  with  the  religious  consciousness 
has  progressed  equally,  through  all  the  events  of 
history,  with  almost  the  same  inexorable  consistency 
of  the  law  of  gravitation. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  Reformation  period  in 
England  we  see  the  ruling  sovereign1  told  by  his 
advisers,  that. in  the  act  of  his  breach  with  Rome, 
and  in  constituting  himself  the  only  supreme  head 
of  the  Church  in  his  dominions,  he  was  but  restoring 
the  Church  in  England  to  a  position  similar  to  that 
which  it  occupied  on  the  continent  of  Europe  in 
the  age  of  Charlemagne.  He  himself  imagined  that 
he  was  at  least  allying  the  despotic  civil  power  of 
the  house  of  Tudor  with  the  principle  of  divine  right 
in  the  State.  Yet  we  see  him  as  but  a  cork  on  the 
stream  of  history.  At  a  later  stage  Elizabeth,  as  the 
movement  progressed,  was  also  ready  to  ally  her  own 
government  with  the  new  forces  in  religion  ;  these 
forces  being  in  the  main  those  which  bore  her  to 
success  and  triumph.2  But  in  the  middle  of  her 
career  we  see  her  reminded  by  a  Scottish  deputa- 
tion, that  there  must  also  be  considered  to  be  latent 
in  the  theory  of  divine  right  in  the  State,  as  it  was 
now  understood,  the  doctrine  that  nations  were  in 
the  last  resort  superior  to  the  sovereigns  who  dif- 

1  Henry  VIII. 

2  Constitutional  Documents  of  the  Puritan  Revolution,  Intro,  xv., 
by  S.  R.  Gardiner. 


ix  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        331 

fered  from  them.  Still  later,  James  I.  and  his  son 
Charles  I.  saw  in  the  alliance  between  their  own 
authority  and  that  of  the  established  Episcopal 
Church  in  England  the  form  of  government  that, 
in  the  words  of  the  chronicler,  "  best  compared  with 
their  own  idea  of  monarchical  power." 1  But  the 
stern  Calvinists  behind  the  Long  Parliament  were 
ready  to  support,  and  did  support  through  all  the 
bitter  consequences  of  the  overthrow  of  Charles 
and  the  ascendency  of  Cromwell,  the  assertion  that 
the  theory  of  divine  right  in  the  State,  as  it  had 
come  to  be  now  understood,  was  in  their  opinion 
associated  with  quite  other  conceptions  of  civil 
government. 

Later  yet  we  see  neither  the  civil  authority  for 
the  time  being  nor  Presbyterianism  itself,  after  it 
had  reached  the  notable  position  of  influence  which 
it  occupied  in  England  at  the  period  of  the  West- 
minster Assembly,  finding  any  firm  principle  in  the 
alliance  between  the  ideals  represented  by  the  two. 
And  still  later  we  see  Cromwell,  in  the  remarkable 
passage  already  quoted,  ever  striving  and  yet  ever 
failing,  alike  under  the  forms  of  freedom  as  under  the 
principles  of  despotism,  to  secure  through  the  Puritan 
ascendency  in  England  the  same  alliance  between  the 
civil  power  of  the  State  and  a  particular  interpreta- 
tion of  religious  doctrine.  Again  and  again,  through 
a  hundred  channels  of  authority  in  England  the  doc- 
trine had  been  preached  of  the  deadly  sinfulness  of 
resistance  to  the  ruling  civil  authority.  But  in  the 
midst  of  the  vast  transition  in  progress  it  happened, 
as  has  been  said,  that  "doctrines  concerning  the  sin- 

1  Mueller,  Hist,  of  Chr.  Church,  vol.  iii.  p.  345. 


332  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

fulness  of  rebellion  which  were  urged  with  the  most 
dogmatic  certainty  and  supported  by  the  most  terrific 
threats,  swayed  to  and  fro  with  each  vicissitude  of 
fortune."  l  They  changed  with  the  passing  ascen- 
dency of  every  interest  of  the  time. 

And  so  the  inevitable  development  of  the  cosmic 
drama  continued  in  history.  It  had  been  supposed 
that  the  authority  of  the  Church  had  passed  to  the 
king.  But  with  the  close  of  the  Puritan  Revolution 
in  England  the  great  end  which  had  been  attained  — 
that  end  by  the  accomplishment  of  which,  as  has  been 
rightly  insisted,  the  restoration  of  Charles  II.  was 
alone  made  possible  —  was,  that  the  predominance  of 
Parliament  in  the  Church  and  over  the  bishops  had 
been  in  turn  substituted  for  that  of  the  king.2  This 
was  the  beginning  of  the  final  stage.  In  the  second 
Revolution,  completed  twenty-eight  years  later  with 
the  flight  of  James  II.,  and  producing  as  its  result 
the  Toleration  Act  and  the  Bill  of  Rights,  there  be- 
gan in  England  the  modern  era  of  parliamentary 
government  by  the  system  of  mutually  opposing 
parties.  In  this  final  transition,  the  steps  of  which 
carry  us  down  into  our  own  time,  the  inevitable  end 
was  already  in  sight.  For  it  had  become  at  last  only 
a  matter  of  time  when  there  must  necessarily  be 
accomplished  in  England  the  emancipation,  now  in 
turn,  of  the  religious  consciousness  from  the  control 
of  Parliament,  in  a  parliamentary  system  in  which  all 
the  leading  parties  in  the  State  were  necessarily 
represented. 

1  History  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,  vol.  ii.  pp.  198-199. 
8  Constitutional  Documents  of  the  Puritan  Revolution,  Intro,  xxxviii. 
and  Ixvii. 


IX  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        333 

It  was  amongst  the  English-speaking  peoples, 
although  not  in  England,  that  the  final  stage  of 
this  immense  drama  of  progress  was  first  reached  in 
the  course  of  inevitable  development.  In  one  of  the 
most  interesting  chapters  in  modern  history,  enacted 
in  the  English-speaking  settlements  in  America,  the 
progress  of  events,  free  from  the  local  disturbing 
causes  which  had  operated  in  England,  was  more 
rapid  and  more  definite.  In  English-speaking  Amer- 
ica nearly  every  colony  began,  to  use  Mr.  Bryce's 
words,  "with  an  establishment  and  endowment  of 
religion  by  the  civil  power.  After  the  American 
Revolution  had  turned  the  colonies  into  States,  every 
State  in  which  such  an  establishment  existed  threw 
it  off,  some  by  a  sudden  effort,  like  Virginia,  some  by 
a  slow  process,  like  Connecticut  and  Massachusetts. 
No  new  State  has  ever  set  it  up." 1  In  the  first 
article  of  those  in  addition  to  and  in  amendment  of 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  proposed  by 
Congress  to  the  Legislatures  of  the  States  25th 
September  1789,  and  ratified  1789-91,  it  is  at  last 
enacted  that :  "  Congress  shall  make  no  law  respect- 
ing an  establishment  of  religion  or  prohibiting 
the  free  exercise  thereof."2  Slowly,  but  with  ever- 
increasing  insistence,  the  stern  logic  of  inherent 
principles  expressed  itself  in  the  events  of  history, 
and  brought  home  to  men's  minds  the  fact  that  they 
were  yet  for  long  to  refuse  to  admit  in  principle, 

1  Prcf.  to  L.  W.  Bacon's  History  of  American  Christianity,  by 
James  Bryce;  sec  also  The  American  Commonwealth,  vol.  i.  chap, 
xxxvii.  and  vol.  ii.  chap.  cvi. 

a  Cf.  MacdonaM's  Select  Documents  illustrative  of  the  History  of  the 
United  States,  No.  5.  The  amendment  went  into  cflect  on  jrd  Nov. 
1791. 


334  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

namely,  that  the  grounds  upon  which  there  had 
hitherto  rested  that  greatest  of  all  despotisms  of  the 
present  —  that  which  must  of  necessity  express  itself 
through  the  alliance  of  civil  authority  with  a  form  of 
religious  belief  conceived  as  concerned  with  the  great- 
est of  all  human  interests  —  had  been  once  and  for 
ever  struck  away  from  it  in  our  civilisation. 

We,  therefore,  see  at  last  in  true  perspective  —  and 
as  constituting  but  the  details  of  a  single  develop- 
mental process  in  history  —  all  the  events  in  the 
movement,  prolonged  over  seven  centuries,  which 
began  with  the  struggle  between  Pope  Gregory  VII. 
and  the  Emperor  in  the  eleventh  century,  and  which 
reached  its  issue  at  last  in  the  definite  terms  regis- 
tered in  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  of 
America.  In  the  article  in  the  American  Constitu- 
tion just  quoted,  we  have  in  Western  history  the  first 
complete  expression  remaining  unchanged  to  the  pres- 
ent day,  of  the  actual  projection  of  the  controlling 
consciousness  of  the  system  of  religious  belief  asso- 
ciated with  our  civilisation  beyond  all  the  forms  and 
principles  of  the  present ;  beyond  the  content  of  all 
systems  of  authority  whatever  in  which  it  had  hitherto 
been  imprisoned  within  the  bounds  of  political  con- 
sciousness. The  most  significant  turning-point  within 
the  horizon  of  Western  history  had  been  passed.  Un- 
seen, unrealised  ;  to  be  for  centuries  yet  but  tacitly 
acknowledged,  but  dimly  comprehended,  or  even  en- 
tirely misunderstood  of  men,  the  ruling  principle  of 
a  new  era  in  the  developmental  process  at  work  in 
human  history  had  risen  into  ascendency  in  the  world. 

Along  one  line  of  intellectual  development  the 
Western  mind  has  yet  to  reach,  in  the  inexorable 


IX  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        335 

events  of  the  historical  process,  the  import  of  the  fact 
already  visible  through  the  analysis  undertaken  in 
Chapter  III.  —  namely,  that  there  is  not,  and  that 
there  never  will  be,  amongst  the  peoples  to  whom  the 
future  belongs,  any  ultimate  sanction  for  the  principle 
of  such  tolerance  in  the  State  as  can  emancipate  the 
future,  save  that  furnished  by  a  conviction  of  respon- 
sibility in  the  human  mind  transcending  the  content 
of  all  interests  within  the  limits  of  political  conscious- 
ness —  before  the  real  nature  is  fully  perceived  of  the 
tremendous  problem  with  which  the  human  mind  has 
wrestled  in  the  cosmic  stress  of  the  centuries  of  our 
era  that  have  passed.1  It  is  only  in  the  first  light  of 
the  principle  of  Projected  Efficiency,  as  applied  to  the 
social  process  in  history,  that  we  begin  to  see  the 
nature  of  the  right  in  which  the  peoples  to  whom 
the  future  belongs  will  hold  the  world  :  The  world  in 
which  the  future  is  to  be  emancipated  is  to  be  a  world 
in  which  every  cause,  and  institution,  and  opinion, 
and  interest  will  hold  its  very  life  at  the  challenge 
of  such  criticism  and  competition  as  has  never  been 
known  before.  But  it  is  to  be  a  world,  nevertheless, 
in  which  all  the  phenomena  of  progress,  and  of  the 
free  conflict  which  prevails,  remain  related  to  a  single 
underlying  cause  ;  namely,  that  the  ultimate  control- 
ling principles  of  human  action  have  been  projected 
beyond  the  content  of  all  systems  whatever  of  inter- 
est or  of  authority  in  the  present. 

It  is  in  the  highest  degree  important  to  note  here, 
in  passing,  the  significance  of  the  conditions  in  which 

'The  scientific  side  of  the  position  with  which  Kant  closed  in  the 
Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  and  in  the  Prolegomena  to  any  Future  j\fft<i- 
fhysic,  henceforward  becomes  clearly  visible  in  the  historical  process. 


336  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

this  result  was  attained.  It  has  been  pointed  out 
that  the  necessary  fact  accompanying  the  projection 
of  the  controlling  centre  of  the  evolutionary  process 
out  of  the  present,  has  been  the  attainment  by  the 
human  mind  of  such  a  conception  of  truth  as  was 
absolutely  unknown  to  it  during  the  epoch  which  cul- 
minated in  the  ancient  civilisations,  and  as  remained 
entirely  foreign  to  it  during  almost  seventeen  centu- 
ries of  our  era ;  namely,  the  conception  of  truth  as 
the  net  resultant  of  forces  and  standards  apparently 
in  themselves  opposed  and  conflicting.  It  was,  ac- 
cordingly, among  the  peoples  where  the  vast  conflict 
of  the  movement  following  the  Reformation  reached 
its  most  characteristic  development  that  the  condi- 
tions tending  most  to  produce  this  result  prevailed. 
It  was  among  the  English-speaking  peoples  of  Eng- 
land and  America  —  constituting  the  representatives 
of  the  most  purely  German  of  the  political  systems 
which  sprang  from  the  ruins  of  the  Roman  empire, 
constituting  in  particular  the  only  large  group  of 
Northern  peoples  who  attained  to  political  maturity 
free  from  the  old-world  shadow  of  the  ancient  civilisa- 
tions,1 and  almost  free  from  the  old-world  spirit  of  the 
Roman  law,2  —  that  this  result  of  the  Reformation, 
transforming  in  its  future  consequences,  slowly,  but 
only  slowly,  began  to  be  visible  in  our  Western  world. 
It  is  in  this  projection  of  the  controlling  centre  of 
the  religious  consciousness  of  our  civilisation  out  of 
the  present,  expressing  itself  in  a  principle  of  toler- 

1  Cf.  Comparative  Politics,  by  E.  A.  Freeman,  pp.  46,  47. 

8  Cf.  Civilisation  during  the  Middle  Ages,  by  G.  B.  Adams,  p.  325. 
Cf.  also  Bryce's  "  Roman  and  English  Law  "  in  Studies  in  History  and 
Jurisprudence,  E.  ii. 


IT  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        337 

ance,  held  in  the  last  resort  as  a  religious  principle, 
and  therefore  itself  becoming  iron  at  the  point  at 
which  its  own  principle  of  tolerance  is  threatened, 
that  we  have  the  most  remarkable,  as  it  is  the  most 
characteristic,  result  of  the  evolutionary  process  in 
our  Western  world.  We  shall  presently  have  to  deal 
with  it  in  its  wider  aspect  as  a  cause  behind  all  the 
phenomena  of  modern  progress.  But  the  movement 
which  has  produced  it  has  been  so  prolonged  ;  its 
effects  are  so  deep,  so  far-reaching,  and  on  so  large  a 
scale  ;  they  lie,  moreover,  as  yet  so  largely  in  the 
future ;  —  that  no  system  of  modern  philosophy  has 
as  yet  seen  it  whole.  And  the  intellectual  process, 
which  in  the  modern  era  of  our  civilisation  has  pro- 
gressed side  by  side  with  the  historical  process  in 
which  the  result  has  been  accomplished,  has  itself 
been  on  a  scale  so  vast  that  the  horizon  of  its  mean- 
ing  has  hitherto  fallen  beyond  the  view  even  of  the 
minds  which  have  most  assisted  in  working  out  its 
principles. 

But  the  main  outline  of  that  meaning,  as  it  has 
begun  at  last  to  come  within  the  field  of  intellectual 
vision,  is  very  remarkable.  Side  by  side  with  the 
process  just  referred  to,  in  which,  in  the  dissocia- 
tion of  the  religious  consciousness  from  all  alliance 
with  civil  authority,  we  have  the  outward  historical 
expression  of  the  projection  of  the  controlling  centre 
of  the  evolutionary  process  beyond  the  bounds  of 
political  consciousness,  it  may  be  noticed  that  there 
are  to  be  distinguished  in  modern  thought  two  main 
streams  of  tendency.  Each  of  these,  involving  a 
development  incomplete  in  itself,  and  forming  but 
an  outward  symptom  of  a  deeper  movement  beneath, 


338  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

has  slowly  but  inevitably  progressed  in  our  time 
towards  the  exhibition  of  its  own  insufficiency.  In 
one  of  these  developments  we  follow  from  the  Ref- 
ormation onward  through  modern  times,  first  of  all 
in  English  and  later  in  German  thought,  a  slowly 
descending  line  of  search  after  the  principle  of  author- 
ity in  politics  allied  with  the  sanction  of  the  system 
of  religious  belief  associated  with  our  civilisation. 
The  ideal  of  this  quest  may  be  said  to  have  reached 
its  last  attenuation  in  Western  thought  in  the  Hege- 
lian conception  of  civil  authority  in  the  Christian 
State.1 

In  the  other  development  we  follow  a  long-sus- 
tained, but  also  gradually  faltering  quest  of  the  intel- 
lect, to  find,  in  the  interests  of  the  existing  political 
State  alone,  the  sole  ruling  principle  in  our  social 
evolution.  This  development  takes  its  way  through 
the  literature  of  the  French  Revolution  into  the  Utili- 
tarian conceptions  of  Bentham  and  the  Mills ;  and  in 
its  turn  it  may  be  said  to  have  reached,  as  Laveleye 
has  correctly  pointed  out,  its  last  logical  inferences 
in  Western  thought  in  the  purely  materialistic  theo- 
ries of  Marxian  socialism.2  Down  to  the  present 
time  the  Latin  mind  in  our  civilisation  has  tended 
to  swing  between  the  extreme  logical  expression  of 
the  concepts  underlying  these  two  ideals  —  between 
the  principles  of  the  pre-Reformation  period,  in 
which  the  Church  is  regarded  as  the  ultimate  and 

1  Compare  John  Henry  Newman's  Apologia  Pro  Vita  Sna,  chap.  i. 
(to  the  year  1833),  for  a  sense  of  the  failure  of  this  conception  reached 
in  a  section  of  English  religious  thought  in  the  first  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 

2  Cf.    The   English    Utilitarians,  by  Leslie   Stephen,  vol.  iii.  pp. 
224-237. 


IX  THE   GREAT   ANTINOMY:    SECOND    STAGE        339 

supreme  power  in  the  organisation  of  civil  authority, 
and  the  principles  of  the  polity  of  the  ancient  civili- 
sations, in  which  the  materialistic  State  is  regarded 
as  containing  within  itself  the  whole  theory  of  human 
ends  and  interests.  It  is  principally  in  the  English- 
speaking  world  that  the  profound  evolutionary  sig- 
nificance of  the  larger  synthesis  of  knowledge  which 
lies  between  these  two  developments  is  becoming 
visible.  The  first  aspect  of  it  has  already,  with  in- 
sight, been  distinguished  by  Sir  Frederick  Pollock 
in  the  assertion  already  referred  to1  —  that  the  char- 
acteristic result  of  all  recent  English  thought  as 
applied  to  the  science  of  society  has  been  a  clearly 
defined  progress,  not  towards  the  ideals  of  either  of 
these  movements,  but  towards  such  a  complete  sepa- 
ration of  all  the  field  of  analytical  political  science, 
on  the  one  hand,  from  what  has  become  the  domain 
of  ethics  and  religion,  on  the  other,  as  has  taken 
place  nowhere  else  in  our  civilisation.2 

1  History  of  the  Science  of  Politics,  pp.  113-114. 

2  Compare,  in  this  connection,  Professor  Holland's  lucid  explanation 
of  the  effect  of  recent  tendencies  in  English  thought  as  they  apply  to 
the  current  science  of  jurisprudence  in  England.     The  moral  sciences 
he  describes  as  tending  in  our  time  to  fall  into  two  grand  divisions. 
The   first  division   he  classifies  as  "  Ethics."     In  the  second  division, 
which  he  describes  as  possessing  hitherto  no  received  collective  name, 
and  which  he  proceeds  to  provisionally  designate  "  Nomology,"  we  are 
concerned,  he  says,  simply  with  the  science  of  the  office  of  external 
regulation  in  the  State.     The  complete  dissociation  of  English  juris- 
prudence  from  the  first  group  is  emphasised  in  these  words:   "The 
moral  sciences  having  thus  been  grouped  under  the  head  of  Ethic,  in 
which  the  object  of  investigation  is  the  conformity  of  the  will  to  a  rule; 
and  of  Nomology,  in  which  the  object  of  investigation  is  the  conformity 
of  acts  to  a  rule,  we  pass  by  the  former  as  foreign  to  our  subject,  and 
confine  our  attention  to  the  latter."     The  laws  with  which  it  is  con- 
cerned no  longer  relate  to  any  kind  of  teleology  of  the  State  and  its 


34O  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

This  result,  entirely  absent  in  countries  where  the 
standards  of  the  pre-Reformation  period  still  prevail,1 
largely  absent,  as  yet,  even  in  Germany  and  in  German 
thought,  where  the  development  which  has  followed 
the  Reformation  has  left  the  religious  consciousness 
still  deeply  entangled  with  the  theory  of  the  State,2 
is  itself  the  distinctive  mark  of  the  advanced  stage 
which  the  evolutionary  process  has  reached  in  the 
English-speaking  world.  It  is  the  necessary  accom- 
paniment and  the  outward  sign  of  the  actual  accom- 
plishment of  that  vast  transition  we  have  been  here 
describing,  in  which,  with  the  projection  of  the  con- 
trolling centre  of  the  evolutionary  process  out  of  the 
present,  a  rule  of  law  has  been  finally  differentiated 

institutions,  but  are  simply  "  general  rules  of  human  action  enforced  by 
a  sovereign  political  authority"  {The  Elements  of  Jurisprudence,  by 
Thomas  Erskine  Holland,  chap.  iii.).  Compare  with  this  Sir  Frederick 
Pollock's  assertion,  that  in  English  thought  the  analytical  branch  of 
political  science  has  become  altogether  independent  of  ethical  theories. 
"  And  that  is  the  definite  scientific  result  which  we  in  England  say  that 
the  work  of  the  past  century  has  given  us"  {History  of  the  Science  of 
Politics,  pp.  113-114). 

1  For  instance,  at  a  conference   of  the  bishops  of  Spain,  held  at 
Burgos  in  September  1899,  seventeen  principles  of  action  in  the  State 
were  formulated.     "  Amongst  those  enumerated  in  a  summary  given  in 
the  Times  were  that  '  toleration  should  be  confined  to  the  narrowest 
limit  allowed  by  the  Constitution,'  that '  no  ecclesiastic  should  be  pun- 
ished by  the  ordinary  civil  courts  of  justice,'  that  marriages  by  the  Church 
should  always  have  civil  effect,  that  bishops  should  recover  legacies  from 
pious  testators  without  any  intervention  of  lay  authority,  and  that  all 
associations  which  are  not  Catholic  should  be  prohibited." 

2  Cf.  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  Right,  pt.  iii.  sec.  iii.  §§  257-360;   and 
Philosophy  of  History,  Intro,  and  pt.  iv.     Hegel  as  yet  saw  in  the  post- 
Reformation  development  in  the  German  State  only  "  the  reconciliation 
of  religion  with  legal  right,"  and  "  no  religious  conscience  in  a  state  of 
separation  from,  or  perhaps  even  hostility  to,  secular  right  "  {Philosophy 
of  History,  pt.  iv.  sec.  iii.  chap.  iii.). 


IX  THE  GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        341 

from  a  rule  of  religion.  It  is  a  result  the  completion 
of  which  marks  the  beginning  of  an  entirely  new  era 
of  synthesis  in  Western  thought. 

But  its  meaning  is  as  yet  scarcely  at  all  understood 
outside  the  pale  of  the  English-speaking  world,1  where 
it  is  giving  to  our  modern  progress  a  certain  double 
aspect  which  is  responsible  for  one  of  the  most  curious 
illusions  of  our  time.  Mr.  Bryce  has  remarked  on 
one  of  the  little  understood  phenomena  of  the  current 
life  of  the  United  States  of  America,  namely,  the 
entire  dissociation  of  the  religious  consciousness  from 
all  forms  of  civil  authority,  existing  side  by  side  with 
an  intensity  of  belief  in  the  acceptance  of  the  form 
of  religious  belief  associated  with  our  civilisation,  and 
of  the  standards  of  conduct  which  it  prescribes,  as 
one  of  the  main  causes  with  which  a  great  national 
destiny  is  identified.2  By  many,  however,  who  have 
for  long  followed  under  one  of  the  phases  of  thought 
here  discussed,  the  ever-increasing  concentration  in 
the  English-speaking  world  of  the  social  mind  on 
the  utilitarian  aspect  of  the  political  sciences,  and  the 
theory  of  the  State  which  it  involves,  there  is  a  con- 
tinuous tendency  to  imagine  —  that  emptiest  of  all 

1  Sir  Frederick  Pollock  justly  notes  how  entirely  misunderstood  on 
the  continent  of  Europe  is  the  precision  and  abstraction  which   the 
Knglish  school  has  succeeded  in  giving  to  technical  terms  in  the  ana- 
lytical branch  of  political  science  as  a  result  of  its  entire  separation  from 
the  domain  of  ethics  (cf.  History  of  the  Science  of  Politics,  pp.  1 14,  1 15). 

2  For  instance  :   "  So  far  from  thinking  their  commonwealth  godless, 
the  Americans  conceive  that  the  religious  character  of  a  government 
consists  in  nothing  but  the  religious  belief  of  the  individual  citi/cns, 
and  the  conformity  of  their  conduct  to  that  belief.     They  deem  the 
general  acceptance  of  Christianity  to  be  one  of  the  main  sources  of  their 
national  prosperity,  and  their  nation  a  special  object  of  the  divine  favour  " 
(  The  American  Commonwealth,  by  James  Hrycc,  vol.  ii.  chap.  cvi.). 


342  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

dreams  to  the  evolutionist  who  has  once  perceived 
the  nature  of  the  process  in  which  human  develop- 
ment is  involved  —  that  the  direction  of  advance  in 
Western  history  is,  therefore,  again  to  subordinate 
all  human  activities,  as  in  the  ancient  civilisations, 
to  the  social  consciousness  as  expressed  through  the 
State.1  The  real  secret  of  our  Western  world  —  the 
cause,  as  we  shall  see  directly,  of  all  its  extraordinary 
and  ever-growing  efficiency  in  history  —  consists,  on 
the  contrary,  in  the  fact  that  the  controlling  centre 
of  the  evolutionary  process  therein  has  been  at  last 
projected  altogether  beyond  the  content  of  political 
consciousness. 

We  are  living,  in  short,  in  Western  history  in 
the  midst  of  a  movement  in  which  through  the 
whole  realm  of  art,  of  ethics,  of  literature,  of  philoso- 
phy, of  politics,  and  of  religion,  there  runs  the  under- 
tone of  a  cosmic  struggle  in  which  now,  not  only  the 
individual  and  all  his  powers,  but  society  itself,  with 
all  its  aims  and  efforts,  is  being  slowly  broken  to  the 
ends  of  a  social  efficiency  no  longer  included  within 
the  limits  of  political  consciousness.  It  is  in  the 
processes  of  this  struggle,  the  single  acts  of  which 
extend  themselves  over  centuries,  that  Natural  Se- 
lection is  discriminating  between  the  living,  the 
dying,  and  the  dead  among  modern  peoples.  It  is  a 
world  in  which,  with  the  passing  of  the  present 
under  the  control  of  the  future,  there  is  being  accom- 
plished for  the  first  time  in  the  development  of  the 
race  the  emancipation  of  the  future  in  the  present. 

1  This  is  the  idea  against  which  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  may  be  per- 
ceived to  be  struggling  in  the  Essays  included  in  The  Man  versus  the 
State. 


IX  THE   GREAT  ANTINOMY:    SECOND   STAGE        343 

It  is  the  world,  therefore,  in  which  all  the  imperiums 
in  which  the  present  had  hitherto  strangled  the  inter- 
ests of  the  greater  future,  are  in  process  of  slow 
disintegration,  and  in  which  we  have,  in  consequence, 
entered  upon  an  era  of  such  a  free  rivalry  of  forces 
as  has  never  been  before  in  the  history  of  the  race. 

It  is  to  the  consideration  of  such  a  world  that  we 
have  now  to  address  ourselves.  There  are,  proceed- 
ing from  the  conditions  here  described,  two  leading 
facts  of  our  time,  the  significance  of  which  will  in  all 
probability  be  fully  visible  within  a  century  to  come. 
The  first  is,  that  the  leading  place  in  our  civilisation 
has  passed  to  the  peoples  amongst  whom  there  has 
first  been  accomplished  this  result  of  the  projection 
of  the  controlling  centre  of  the  evolutionary  process 
out  of  the  present  in  the  long-drawn-out  struggle 
which  has  here  been  described.  The  other  result, 
already  becoming  visible  beneath  the  profoundly 
complex  life  of  the  United  States  of  America,  con- 
stitutes probably  the  most  pregnant  and  remarkable 
fact  in  modern  history.  It  is  that  the  actual  life- 
centre  of  the  system  of  religious  belief  associated 
with  our  civilisation  has  been  definitely  shifted  for 
the  present  within  the  pale  of  the  activities  of  these 
peoples. 


CHAPTER   X 

THE   MODERN   WORLD-CONFLICT 

As  soon  as  the  mind  has  endeavoured  to  realise  the 
nature  of  the  position  outlined  in  the  last  chapter,  it 
is  impossible  to  avoid  receiving  a  deep  impression  of 
the  significance  of  its  bearing  on  the  complex  move- 
ment of  development,  which,  under  many  phases,  is 
unfolding  itself  beneath  our  eyes  in  the  modern  world- 
process.  If  we  have  been  right  so  far,  we  appear  to 
have  in  sight  a  single  controlling  principle,  the  opera- 
tion of  which  divides,  as  by  a  clear  line  of  demarca- 
tion, the  meaning  of  the  era  in  which  we  are  living 
from  that  of  all  the  past  history  of  the  race.  We  are 
regarding  an  integrating  process,  the  larger  meaning 
of  which  is  still  in  the  future,  the  first  stage  of  which 
has  occupied  nearly  two  thousand  years,  and  into  the 
influence  of  which  all  the  tendencies  of  development 
in  our  civilisation  are  being  slowly  and  increasingly 
drawn.  The  impression  made  at  first  sight  on  the 
mind  by  the  character  of  the  position  reached  loses 
nothing  on  reflection.  On  the  contrary,  the  tendency 
is  rather  for  it  to  grow  and  deepen  as  the  nature  of 
the  transition  in  which  the  future  is  being  emanci- 
pated in  history  is  better  understood.  In  the  modern 
conflict  between  tendencies  in  ethics,  in  the  State,  in 
government,  in  national  development,  and  in  univer- 
sal politics,  it  is  the  meaning  of  the  struggle  between 
the  future  and  the  present  which  weights  all  the 

344 


CHAP,  x  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  345 

processes  of  the  intellect  and  all  the  developments  of 
history.  The  races  and  peoples  who  are  competitors 
in  the  struggle  may  have  any  theory  they  please  of 
their  interests,  or  of  the  ends  or  ideals  of  politics  or 
of  government.  But,  if  the  principle  of  Projected 
Efficiency  be  accepted  as  operating  in  society  in  the 
conditions  described,  then  in  respect  of  none  of  these 
alone  will  they  retain  their  places  in  the  conflict.  The 
winning  conditions  in  the  struggle  are  determined. 
They  are  those  of  the  people  who  already  most  effi- 
ciently bear  on  their  shoulders  in  the  present,  the  bur- 
den of  the  principles  with  which  the  meaning  of  a 
process  infinite  in  the  future  is  identified.  Let  us 
see,  therefore,  if  we  can  follow,  into  the  midst  of  the 
current  life  of  the  time,  the  application  of  that  prin- 
ciple under  which  we  see  the  ascendency  of  the  pres- 
ent moving  now  towards  its  challenge  throughout  the 
whole  range  of  the  modern  world-conflict. 

If  the  mind  is  fixed  on  that  period  of  Western  his- 
tory which  begins  at  the  point  up  to  which  we  had 
advanced  with  the  close  of  the  last  chapter  —  that  is 
to  say,  with  the  opening  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  which  thence  extends  down  into  the  midst  of  the 
time  in  which  we  are  living  —  there  are  certain  fea- 
tures of  the  epoch  embraced  which  immediately  arrest 
attention.  Between  the  dates  mentioned  there  is  in- 
cluded an  interval  of  time  so  altogether  remarkable  in 
results  that  to  institute  any  real  parallel  between  it 
and  a  previous  period  of  history  is  impossible.  It 
may  be  imagined  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  it  must  have  appeared  to  the  reflective 
mind,  that,  so  far  as  progress  in  the  arts  and  sciences 
and  in  general  material  results  were  concerned,  the 


346  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

interval  which,  up  to  that  time,  had  been  placed  be- 
tween our  civilisation  and  that  of  the  ancient  Roman 
world  had  not  been,  on  the  whole,  very  considerable. 
Yet  since  that  time  —  that  is  to  say,  during  a  brief 
period  of  some  two  hundred  years  —  our  Western 
world  has  been  transformed.  The  increase  in  natural 
resources,  in  wealth,  in  population,  and  in  the  distance 
which  has  been  placed  between  our  modern  civilisa- 
tion and  any  past  condition  of  the  race,  has  been 
enormous.  During  the  last  half  of  this  period,  that 
is  to  say,  during  the  nineteenth  century  alone,  while 
the  population  of  the  rest  of  the  world  remained  nearly 
stationary,  the  actual  numbers  of  the  European  peo- 
ples rose  from  170,000,000  to  500,000,000.  *  The  im- 
petus from  which  this  increase  proceeded  continues, 
moreover,  to  be  so  immense  that  we  may  even  accept 
the  assertion  that  there  is  "  a  reasonable  probability 
that,  unless  some  great  internal  change  should  take 
place  in  the  ideas  and  conduct  of  the  European  races 
themselves,  this  population  of  500,000,000  will  in 
another  century  become  one  of  1,500,000,000  to 
2,000,000,000  "  ; 2  the  remainder  of  the  population  of 
the  world  being,  so  far  as  can  be  seen,  destined  to  re- 
main comparatively  stationary. 

These  figures  are  to  be  taken  only  as  an  index  to 
the  stupendous  changes  which  have  taken  place,  and 
which  are  still  in  progress,  beneath  the  surface  of  life 
and  thought  throughout  the  entire  fabric  of  our  civili- 
sation. It  matters  not  in  what  direction  we  look,  the 
character  of  the  revolution  which  has  been  effected  is 

1  Address  to  the  Manchester  Statistical  Society,  October  1900,  by  Sir 
Robert  Giffen,  see  p.  15. 

2  Ibid. 


x  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  347 

the  same.  In  inventions,  in  commerce,  in  the  arts  of 
civilised  life,  in  most  of  the  theoretical  and  applied 
sciences,  and  in  nearly  every  department  of  investi- 
gation and  research,  the  progress  of  Western  know- 
ledge and  equipment  during  the  period  in  question  has 
been  striking  beyond  comparison.  In  many  directions 
it  has  been  so  great  that  it  undoubtedly  exceeds  in 
this  brief  period  the  sum  of  all  the  previous  advance 
made  by  the  race. 

A  significant  feature,  too,  is  that  the  process  of 
change  and  progress  has  continued  and  still  contin- 
ues to  grow  in  intensity.  The  results  obtained,  for 
instance,  during  the  nineteenth  century,  altogether 
exceed  in  range  and  magnitude  those  achieved  during 
the  eighteenth.  The  results  of  the  second  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  similarly  surpass  in  importance 
those  of  the  first  half.  And  yet  never  before  has  the 
expectancy  with  which  the  world  waits  on  the  future 
been  so  intense  as  in  the  time  at  which  we  have  ar- 
rived. There  is  scarcely  an  important  department  of 
practical  or  of  speculative  knowledge  which  is  not 
pregnant  with  possibilities  greater  than  any  that  have 
already  been  achieved.  Such  is  the  nature  of  exist- 
ing Western  conditions,  that  there  is  scarcely  any 
appliance  of  civilisation,  however  well  established  ; 
scarcely  any  invention,  however  all-embracing  its  hold 
on  the  world,  which  the  well-informed  mind  is  not 
prepared  to  see  entirely  superseded  within  a  compara- 
tively brief  period  in  the  future. 

The  movements  which  have  been  developing  be- 
neath the  face  of  history  and  to  which  these  outward 
results  are  related  arc  still  more  remarkable.  This 
vast  advance  has  been  accompanied  by  conditions  of 


348  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  rapid  disintegration  of  all  absolutisms  within 
which  the  human  spirit  had  hitherto  been  confined. 
In  a  world  moving  towards  the  emancipation  of  the 
future  in  such  a  free  conflict  of  forces  as  has  never 
been  possible  before,  all  the  speculations,  the  opin- 
ions, the  beliefs,  and  the  institutions  through  which 
the  ascendant  present  had  hitherto  shut  down  on  the 
activities  of  the  human  mind,  have  tended  to  be  more 
and  more  deprived  of  the  support  of  those  organised 
imperiums  in  human  affairs  through  which  the  pres- 
ent had  imposed  itself  upon  the  world  in  the  past.1 
It  has  been  the  age  of  the  unfettering  of  discussion 
and  of  competition ;  of  the  enfranchisement  of  the 
individual,  of  classes,  of  parties,  of  opinions,  of  com- 
merce, of  industry,  and  of  thought.  Into  the  result- 
ing conditions  of  the  social  order  all  the  forces,  powers, 
and  equipments  of  human  nature  have  been  unloosed. 
It  has  been  the  age  of  the  development  throughout 
our  civilisation  of  the  conditions  of  such  rivalry  and 
strenuousness,  of  such  conflict  and  stress,  as  has 
never  prevailed  in  the  world  before. 

It  is,  however,  the  actual  vitality,  the  undoubted 
permanence  of  the  principle  from  which  this  progress 
proceeds,  which  finally  leaves  the  deepest  impression 
on  the  mind.  When  we  realise,  however  dimly,  the 
real  nature  of  the  ultimate  principle  in  which  all  the 
movement  around  us  has  its  origin ;  when  we  stand 
in  the  midst  of  the  rushing  tide  of  the  life  of  New 
York  or  Chicago,  and  catch  sight  of  the  actual  re- 
lationship between  the  deep-seated,  inherent  anti- 
nomies of  the  English-speaking  world  as  they  were 

1  Cf.  "The  True  American  Spirit  in  Literature,"  Atlantic  Monthly, 
vol.  Ixxxiv.,  Charles  Johnston. 


x  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  349 

discussed  in  the  last  chapter,  and  the  fierce  stress 
and  freedom  of  American  life,  industry,  and  progress 
at  the  present  day  ;  —  an  overwhelming  sense  of  the 
character  of  the  future  takes  possession  of  the  mind. 
It  is  the  principles  of  our  Western  civilisation  as 
here  displayed,  and  no  others,  that  we  feel  are  des- 
tined to  hold  the  future  of  the  world.  It  is  not  into 
the  end  but  into  the  beginning  of  an  era  that 
we  have  been  born.  One  of  those  fateful  turning 
periods  in  which  a  new  determining  principle  has 
begun  to  operate  in  the  evolutionary  process  has 
been  passed.  We  are  living  in  the  midst  of  a  system 
of  things  by  the  side  of  which  no  other  system  will  in 
the  end  survive  as  a  rival  in  the  world. 

What,  then,  is  the  nature  of  this  cause  which  is  at 
work  in  our  Western  world,  and  which  has  simulta- 
neously affected  with  such  stupendous  results  so 
many  spheres  of  human  activity  ?  What  is  this  new 
ruling  principle  which  appears  to  have  risen  into  the 
ascendant  in  Western  history  ?  There  can  be  no 
doubt  as  to  what  the  answer  to  this  question  must 
be.  We  are  in  sight  of  the  working  in  the  world  of 
that  principle  with  which  the  civilisation  of  our  era 
had  been  pregnant  from  the  beginning,  and  which 
was  slowly  born  into  the  world  during  the  long  stress 
of  the  development  described  in  the  previous  chap- 
ters. By  the  gradual  projection  of  the  controlling 
meaning  of  the  evolutionary  process  beyond  the 
bounds  of  political  consciousness,  and  by  the  result- 
ing dissolution  of  all  the  absolutisms  in  which  the 
hitherto  ascendant  present  had  strangled  the  future, 
we  are  being  brought  into  contact  with  the  first  re- 
sults of  the  actual  working  in  history  of  the  most 


350  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

effective  cause  of  progress  that  has  ever  prevailed  in 
the  world.  And  it  is  inevitable  that  before  the  viril- 
ity and  efficiency  of  the  system  of  social  order  pro- 
ceeding from  it,  all  other  systems  whatever  must  in 
the  end  go  down. 

In  the  midst  of  the  reconstruction  that  has  been 
taking  place  in  the  modern  world  —  a  reconstruction 
so  profound  that  entire  systems  of  thought  have,  as 
we  have  seen,  mistaken  for  a  time  even  the  direction 
in  which  we  have  been  moving  —  it  is  not  easy  for  the 
mind  to  grasp  at  once  the  reach  of  the  process  which 
thus  connects  all  the  apparently  complex  phenomena 
of  change  and  progress  of  our  time  with  an  under- 
lying principle  of  the  evolutionary  process  so  simple 
and  yet  so  far-reaching.  Let  us  see  now  if  it  is  possi- 
ble to  bring  directly  home  to  the  mind  some  concep- 
tion of  the  manner  in  which  this  principle  actually 
works,  as  the  determining  cause  behind  the  phe- 
nomena of  modern  progress. 

Now  it  is  necessary  to  keep  in  view  from  this  point 
forward  a  fact  the  overshadowing  significance  of 
which  will  be  more  clearly  realised  in  the  next  chap- 
ter. It  may  be  distinguished  that,  as  the  result  of 
the  developments  described  in  the  preceding  chap- 
ters, the  evolutionary  process  must  in  the  next  stage 
in  Western  history  carry  us  into  the  midst  of  a 
supreme  struggle,  the  outlines  of  which  are  already  in 
sight.  The  controlling  principle  to  which  all  the 
events  of  social  development  must  become  related  as 
this  struggle  defines  itself  is  very  remarkable.  It  in- 
volves nothing  less  than  the  challenge  of  the  ascend- 
ency of  the  present  in  the  economic  process  in  the 
whole  domain  of  human  activities  throughout  the  world. 


x  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  351 

There  is  no  department  of  the  activities  of  our 
time  which  seems  to  the  ordinary  observer  to  be  more 
remote  from,  and  to  have  less  association  with,  the 
principle  of  the  projection  of  the  controlling  centre 
of  the  evolutionary  process  outside  the  limits  of  po- 
litical consciousness,  than  that  which  is  embraced  in 
the  economic  life  of  our  civilisation.  By  large  num- 
bers of  observers,  and  even  by  many  who  would  not 
necessarily  be  prepared  to  assert  with  Marx  that  the 
economic  factor  is  the  ruling  factor  in  human  history, 
the  department  of  affairs  with  which  economic  theory 
is  concerned  is  regarded  as  a  sphere  of  human  activ- 
ity peculiarly  self-centred.  The  world  to  which  the 
science  of  political  economy  relates  —  the  science 
which  Bagehot  described  as  tending  to  become  in 
England  simply  the  science  of  Business  or  of  the 
Great  Commerce l  —  is,  in  short,  the  world  in  which 
the  rule  of  average  commercial  self-interest  in  the  ex- 
isting political  conditions  of  civilisation  is  regarded 
as  ultimately  supreme.  No  department  of  human 
activity  would  seem  to  be  more  completely  occupied 
with  the  present ;  and,  therefore,  to  be  altogether 
more  remote  from  the  action  of  the  principle  we  have 
been  describing.  Nevertheless,  all  the  world-shaping 
conflict  in  the  domain  of  religion,  of  thought,  of  poli- 
tics, with  which  we  have  so  far  been  occupied  is  but 
preliminary  to  the  vast  struggle  towards  which  the  mod- 
ern world  moves  ;  a  struggle  in  which  the  ascendency 
of  the  present  is  destined  to  be  broken  in  the  economic 
process,  in  the  conditions  of  such  afreeandefficientcon- 
flict  of  forces  as  has  never  prevailed  in  the  world  before. 

i  The  Postulates  of  English  Political  Economy,  by  the  late  Walter 
Bagehot,  with  prcf.  by  Alfred  Marshall,  p.  7. 


352  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

When  the  observer,  at  the  present  time,  has  ad- 
vanced some  distance  towards  the  mastery  of  the 
principles  underlying  the  economic  development  in 
progress  in  the  English-speaking  world  on  both  sides 
of  the  Atlantic,  it  is  impossible  to  avoid  being  struck 
with  the  significance  of  the  process  as  a  whole.  In 
the  section  of  that  world  represented  in  the  United 
States,  we  have  in  view  the  economic  process  in  con- 
ditions of  undoubtedly  the  highest  intensity  and  po- 
tentiality it  has  ever  reached  in  the  world.  In  the 
section  of  which  England  is  the  centre  we  catch  sight, 
moreover,  for  the  first  time  in  history,  of  a  conception 
round  which  a  practical  system  of  world-politics  —  in 
the  face  of  difficulties,  still  from  time  to  time  pro- 
nounced by  its  critics  to  be  insurmountable — -is  ac- 
tually slowly  beginning  to  centre ;  namely,  the  ideal 
of  a  stateless  competition  of  all  the  individuals  of 
every  land,  in  which  the  competitive  potentiality  of 
all  natural  powers  shall  be  at  last  completely  enfran- 
chised in  the  world. 

Despite  the  undoubted  survival  in  great  strength 
into  this  process,  as  it  is  now  represented  in  both  sec- 
tions of  the  English-speaking  world,  of  many  concep- 
tions and  principles  representing  a  past  era  of  human 
evolution  ;  despite  the  vigorous  expression  therein  of 
ideals  which  represent  the  ascendency  of  the  present 
under  some  of  the  most  colossal  phases  it  has  attained 
in  history;  —  of  the  tendency  of  the  process  as  a 
whole,  of  the  character  of  the  forces  behind  it,  and  of 
the  place  in  the  world  of  the  new  system  of  order 
which  it  is  destined  to  produce  there  can  be  no  doubt. 

When  the  observer  stands  at  the  present  time  in 
the  midst  of  the  industrial  life  of  the  eastern  and  mid- 


x  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  353 

die  states  of  America,  it  gradually  dawns  on  his  mind, 
if  he  has  mastered  the  subject,  that  there  is  a  fact  in 
the  equipment  of  the  United  States  in  the  economic 
struggle  upon  which  the  world  is  entering,  the  over- 
whelming significance  of  which  is  hardly  ever  fully 
grasped  by  the  European  student.  This  is  the  de- 
gree of  intensity  at  present  reached  in  the  economic 
process  in  that  country.  Never  before  in  the  world, 
and  nowhere  else  in  the  world  at  the  present  time, 
has  the  economic  process  attained  to  the  conditions 
that  are  here  represented.  The  attention  of  the  world 
is  still  fixed  on  a  great  number  of  other  causes,  to 
which  it  attributes  the  enormous  industrial  expansion 
of  the  United  States  which  is  in  progress  under  its 
eyes.  The  history  of  the  country,  its  geographical 
position,  and  the  great  natural  resources  and  endow- 
ments of  the  land,  are  all  pointed  to  in  turn.  There 
need  be  no  disposition  to  underrate  any  of  these  ad- 
vantages. But  it  will  in  all  probability  be  distinguished 
in  the  future  that  it  is  to  none  of  them  that  the  expan- 
sion of  the  United  States  is  in  the  first  instance  due. 

In  respect  of  no  such  material  advantages,  for  in- 
stance, could  it  have  been  foretold,  in  the  midst  of  the 
European  development  described  in  the  last  chapter, 
that  the  insignificant  section  of  European  peoples  who 
spoke  English  were  about  in  a  brief  period  to  become 
a  fourth  of  the  white  population  of  the  earth,  and  to 
see  nearly  half  the  world  pass  under  the  direct  influ- 
ence of  their  laws  and  institutions.  So  now  it  is  to 
none  of  these  material  or  mechanical  causes  alone 
that  we  must  look  for  the  true  reason  of  the  excep- 
tional expansion  of  the  United  States.  It  is  upon  the 
causes  that  have  produced  the  extraordinary  intensity 


354  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

of  the  economic  conditions  obtaining  amongst  the 
people  of  the  United  States  that  the  attention  of  the 
observer  of  insight  will  be  concentrated  from  the  be- 
ginning. It  is  the  intensity  of  these  conditions  that 
exercises  so  marked  an  influence  on  the  entire  life- 
habits  of  the  people,  that  is  producing  a  continually 
increasing  effect  upon  the  industrial  development  of 
our  civilisation,  and  that  must  in  time  profoundly  in- 
fluence the  tendencies  of  progress  throughout  the 
whole  world.  Without  this  cause  even  the  great  natu- 
ral resources  of  the  United  States  would  not  have 
counted.  For  without  it  the  economic  process  in  the 
United  States  would  have  taken  at  least  a  century 
longer  to  have  reached  its  present  advanced  stage  of 
development.  It  is  the  immeasurably  deeper  intensity 
of  the  economic  and  industrial  conflict  prevailing  over 
the  widest  area  of  freedom  hitherto  cleared  in  the 
world  which,  more  than  any  other  cause,  and  more 
than  all  other  causes  together,  has  equipped  the  people 
of  the  United  States  with  the  irresistible  potency 
they  are  about  to  exercise  in  the  world  in  the  eco- 
nomic era  upon  which  we  are  entering. 

Confining  our  attention,  therefore,  for  the  time  be- 
ing to  the  English-speaking  section  of  the  advanced 
peoples  ;  —  how,  it  may  be  asked,  have  these  peoples 
come  to  receive  the  equipment  which  has  at  the  pres- 
ent day  reached  its  most  developed  phase  in  the  inten- 
sity of  the  economic  conditions  prevailing  in  the 
United  States  ?  It  is  an  equipment,  the  import  of 
which  has  been,  as  yet,  scarcely  grasped  by  the  mod- 
ern mind.  It  is  necessary  to  look  beneath  the  sur- 
face of  the  political  and  economic  life  of  the  age,  and 
to  see  how  deeply  during  the  past  century  the  spirit, 


X  THE   MODERN   WORLD-CONFLICT  355 

the  example,  and  the  methods  of  the  system  of  social 
order  which  has  grown  up  in  the  English-speaking 
world  have  already  influenced  the  whole  of  Western 
civilisation  to  realise  for  how  much  the  principles  that 
have  produced  it  count  in  the  world.  The  full  signifi- 
cance of  these  principles  can,  indeed,  be  grasped  only 
when  their  relationship  is  perceived  to  that  ultimate 
fact  of  Western  history  we  have  been  discussing 
throughout,  namely,  that  all  other  systems  of  social 
order  must  in  the  end  go  down  before  those  within 
which  the  future  has  been  emancipated  in  the  freest 
and  most  efficient  conflict  of  forces  in  the  present. 

When  we  regard  the  conditions  in  which  the  evo- 
lutionary process  is  slowly  advancing  towards  the 
challenge  of  the  ascendency  of  the  present  in  the 
economic  life  of  the  modern  world,  we  have  in  view  a 
spectacle  of  the  highest  interest.  To  understand, 
however,  the  character  of  the  forces  involved  it  is 
desirable  that  the  mind  should,  as  far  as  possible,  con- 
tinue its  advance  from  the  position  reached  in  the  last 
chapter.  Now,  if  we  look  beneath  the  surface  of  the 
life  of  the  English-speaking  world  at  the  present  day, 
it  may  readily  be  perceived,  if  the  examination  is  car- 
ried far  enough,  how  profoundly  the  entire  character 
of  the  social  process  amongst  the  included  peoples  has 
been  influenced  as  the  great  antinomy,  of  which  the 
development  was  traced  through  Western  history  in 
the  previous  chapters,  has  come  in  its  modern  form 
to  draw  into  its  influence  the  entire  practical  affairs 
of  the  world.  The  conditions  of  almost  every  form 
of  human  activity  have,  almost  insensibly,  passed 
under  the  control  of  a  new  ruling  principle  in  the 
evolutionary  process.  In  the  first  result,  they  may 


3$6  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

already  be  perceived  to  have  become  intensified  be- 
yond any  standard  that  has  ever  prevailed  in  the  world 
before.  It  matters  not  from  what  side  we  take  up 
the  examination,  the  facts  continue  to  point  in  the 
same  direction,  and  the  culminating  effect  on  the 
mind  is  in  the  highest  degree  impressive. 

If  attention  is  directed  at  first  to  the  domain  of 
abstract  thought,  it  may  be  perceived  that  the  result 
attained  in  the  conditions  which  prevail  at  the  present 
day  in  the  English-speaking  world  is  very  remark- 
able. By  the  necessary  tolerance  of  each  other  of 
many  conflicting  views  ;  behind  all  of  which  there 
exists  the  all-pervading  influence  of  the  principle  — 
of  necessity  tacitly  accepted  even  by  individuals 
who  reject  the  premises — that,  while  truth  is  to  be 
considered,  on  the  one  hand,  as  transcending  the 
content  of  any  welfare  comprised  within  the  bounds 
of  political  consciousness,  it  is  only  to  be  conceived, 
on  the  other,  as  the  net  resultant  of  forces  and  stand- 
ards apparently  in  themselves  conflicting ;  there 
has  been  almost  imperceptibly  developed  an  entirely 
new  attitude  of  the  human  mind  towards  every  sys- 
tem of  action,  of  power,  of  knowledge,  and  of  opinion 
representing  itself  for  the  time  being  as  the  embodi- 
ment of  a  principle  claiming  general  assent. 

The  first  large  outward  expression  of  this  attitude, 
as  a  working  principle  in  the  political  life  of  our 
civilisation,  is  that  which  we  have  in  view  in  the 
rise  of  the  system  of  Party  Government,  the  im- 
mediate development  of  which  in  public  life  in 
England  was  coincident  with  the  close  of  the  era 
described  in  the  last  chapter.  If  the  mind  is  carried 
back  over  the  recent  political  history  of  the  English- 


X  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  357 

speaking  world  it  may  be  noticed  that  in  almost 
every  quarter  it  presents  the  same  feature.  Side  by 
side  with  the  increasing  assertion  of  the  right  of 
every  community,  from  the  hamlet  to  a  continent, 
to  manage  its  own  local  affairs,  there  has  been  devel- 
oped that  phenomenon  in  public  affairs  now  known 
as  the  system  of  government  by  party.  No  system 
of  government  has  been  more  sweepingly  condemned 
outside  the  countries  where  it  exists.  In  it  there 
survives,  as  indeed  there  still  survives  in  most  of  the 
institutions  of  the  present  day,  many  of  the  evils  of 
the  era  of  evolution  out  of  which  the  world  is  moving. 
No  system  of  government  is  from  time  to  time  more 
scathingly  criticised  even  in  England  and  America. 
Nevertheless,  no  system  has  ever  been  invented 
which  has  given  such  efficient  results  as  a  cause  of 
progress.  Throughout  the  public  affairs  of  the  whole 
of  the  English-speaking  peoples  at  the  present  day  it 
is  the  life-principle  of  all  effective  criticism  ;  the 
most  potent  fact  behind  every  condition  of  good 
government.  For  150  years  it  has  been  the  soul  of 
that  orderly  unceasing  stress  of  competing  principles, 
from  out  of  which  the  rapid  but  unhasting  political 
progress  of  the  English-speaking  world  has  proceeded. 
Whatever  its  faults,  it  is  the  first  large  outward 
result  in  the  political  life  of  our  civilisation  of  the 
ascendency  of  the  principle  which  emerged  out  of 
the  long  stress  of  the  development  described  in  the 
last  chapter. 

Now  if  we  look  closely  at  the  system  of  govern- 
ment by  party,  it  may  be  perceived  that  what  it 
essentially  represents  is  the  unconscious  organisa- 
tion, on  each  side  of  a  line  of  cleavage,  of  all  the 


358  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

opposing  elements  in  any  situation  utilised  against 
each  other  to  the  full  extent  of  their  powers  as  forces 
of  criticism  and  progress.  The  essence  of  the  sys- 
tem is  that  there  are  of  necessity  only  two  principal 
parties,  each  continually  organised  in  opposition  to 
the  other ; 1  and  that,  as  in  the  system  of  legal  trial 
developed  in  the  conditions  of  English  jurispru- 
dence,2 each  side  proceeds  from  the  point  of  view  that 
it  is  itself  entirely  in  the  right,  and  that  its  opponent 
is  of  necessity  equally  and  entirely  in  the  wrong. 
Vital,  essential,  and  fundamental  as  is  the  system  of 
party  government  in  the  circumstances  mentioned, 
it  is  nevertheless  almost  outside  the  forms  and  recog- 
nition of  written  constitutions.  A  system  in  the 
conduct  of  public  affairs  which  appears  so  entirely 
bewildering,  and  even  absurd,  to  the  observer  who 
has  not  grasped  its  meaning,  is  only  made  possible 
by  a  condition  which  is  always  in  the  background, 
but  which  is  never  expressed  in  any  constitutional 
formula.  It  is  a  condition  the  influence  of  which 
has  come  to  permeate  the  entire  atmosphere  of  the 
intellectual  and  ethical  life  of  the  English-speaking 
world,  as  the  result  of  the  ascendency  therein  of  the 

1  The  character  of  the  party  system,  as  an  organisation  of  two  great 
parties  only  in  the  government  of  the  State,  is  as  remarkable  in  the 
United  States  as  in  England.     Looking  through  the  records,  in  Stan- 
wood's  History  of  the  Presidency,  of  the  last  ten  presidential  elections 
included  in  the  nineteenth  century,  the  fact  has  to  be  noted  that  of  the 
59  candidates  for  the  Presidency,  for  whom  votes  were    cast  by  the 
members  of  various  parties,  the  20  official  candidates  of  the  two  great 
opposing  parties  in  the  United  States  received  over  94  per  cent  of  the 
total   votes.     All   the    other   39  candidates  of  other  parties  received 
together  less  than  6  per  cent. 

2  Compare  in  this  connection  Note,  p.  361,  in  relation  to  differences 
in  principles  of  jurisprudence  in  Latin  countries. 


X  THE   MODERN   WORLD-CONFLICT  359 

principle  which  emerged  into  view  in  the  develop- 
ment described  in  the  last  chapter.  It  is  a  condition 
which  may  be  perceived  to  represent,  in  the  last 
resort,  the  tacit  assumption,  even  when  the  individ- 
ual may  appear  to  repudiate  it,  that  the  claim  of 
right  upon  those  who  profess  to  be  its  adherents 
goes  deeper  than  the  claim  of  loyalty  to  any  system 
of  government,  or  of  party,  or  of  authority,  repre- 
senting itself  for  the  time  being  as  its  expression.  It 
is,  in  short,  the  subconscious  admission  of  the  fact 
that,  however  intense  our  convictions,  we  are  not  the 
ultimate  repositories  of  truth,  and  that  therefore  our 
opponents  may  after  all  be  right.1 

This  is  why  the  peoples  who  have  not  been  beaten 
out  in  history  beneath  the  tremendous  blows  of  the 
developmental  process  described  in  the  last  chapter, 
and  whose  habit  of  mind  it  is,  consequently,  to  see 
right  or  truth  absolute  in  a  principle  or  institution, 
have  on  the  whole  failed  to  successfully  develop  the 
system  of  Party  in  government,  or  even  to  grasp  its 
essential  meaning.  The  vast  assumption  which 
underlies  it  involves,  it  may  be  perceived,  a  concep- 
tion of  the  nature  of  ultimate  principles  which  they 
have  never  accepted.  The  fact  that  parties  or  their 
leaders  should  be  at  once  uncompromisingly  hostile 
and  yet  be  mutually  tolerant ;  that  they  should  en- 
force their  principles  on  the  whole  community  at  the 
point  of  the  narrowest  majority,  and  yet  expect  that 

1  The  fumlamental  difference  in  this  respect  which  separates  even 
the  abstract  idea  of  the  State  in  Latin  countries  on  the  continent  of 
Europe  from  the  idea  of  the  State  in  England,  where  the  limitation 
of  all  powers  and  rights  is  deeply  rooted  in  the  subconsciousness  of  the 
community,  will  be  often  obvious  in  current  affairs  at  the  present  day 
to  the  deeper  student  of  politics. 


360  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

their  successors  on  acceding  to  power  should  not 
attempt  to  reverse  the  law  they  have  made ;  that 
they  should  be,  as  has  sometimes  been  the  case  in 
the  United  States,  divided  by  a  principle  scarcely 
visible  to  outsiders,1  and  yet  proceed  to  call  out  all 
the  strength  of  their  adherents  on  the  assumption 
that  the  opposing  party  is  in  all  its  proposals  the 
representative  of  absolute  error;  that  they  should, 
even  after  the  most  bitterly  contested  struggles,  accept 
the  result  as  conclusive  for  the  time  being,  and  with 
that  immediate  subsidence  of  excitement  which  has 
been  characteristic  of  the  great  historic  party  struggles 
in  the  United  States  ;2  nay,  that  they  should  in  their 
organs  of  opinion  even  go  out  of  their  way,  as  has 
sometimes  happened  in  England,  to  regret  the  lack 
of  organisation  or  strength  in  their  opponents  as 
being  bad  for  their  own  side  ;  —  are  all  matters  which 
appear  from  time  to  time  to  a  large  class  of  critics  as 
utterly  irreconcilable  with  standards  of  right  conduct 
as  they  prevail  elsewhere  in  our  civilisation.  They 
present  themselves  either,  at  the  best,  as  bewildering 
absurdities,  or,  at  the  worst,  as  conclusive  evidence 
of  the  consistent  and  organised  hypocrisy  of  the  pub- 
lic life  of  the  peoples  amongst  whom  they  are  found. 
At  first  sight,  in  short,  no  more  illogical,  anarchic, 
or  impossible  principle  of  government  could  be  con- 
ceived. Yet  no  more  elemental  condition  of  progress 
has  ever  existed  in  the  world.  It  is  the  first  funda- 
mental working  principle  in  public  life  contributing 
to  the  freedom  and  intensity  of  conditions  that  pre- 

1  Cf.    The  Lesson  of  Popular  Government,  by  Gamaliel  Bradford, 
vol.  i.  c.  xix. 

2  A  History  of  the  Presidency,  by  Edward  Stanwood,  c.  xxxi. 


x  THE  MODERN   WORLD-CONFLICT  361 

vail  amongst  the  English-speaking  peoples.  So 
naturally  has  it  sprung  from  the  principles  underly- 
ing the  development  of  those  peoples,  that  it  has 
nearly  always  proved  impossible  in  practical  life  to 
keep  its  influence  out  of  the  affairs  of  tfie  smallest 
township  or  precinct.  So  entirely  foreign  has  its 
meaning  proved  to  the  peoples  amongst  whom  the 
development  described  in  the  last  chapter  has  not 
run  its  full  course,  that  as  a  successful  working  sys- 
tem of  government  it  is  at  the  present  day  almost 
unrepresented  outside  the  limits  of  the  English- 
speaking  world.1 

If  we  follow,  from  the  first  outward  contact  with 
it  under  this  form,  the  influence  on  the  general  life 
of  the  advanced  peoples,  of  this  conception  of  re- 
sponsibility to  principles  projected  beyond  the  claims 
of  all  systems  of  authority,  bounded  by  the  limits  of 
political  consciousness,  the  reach  of  its  action  in 
other  spheres  of  activity  continues  to  be  apparent. 
There  is  no  single  cause  which  has  operated  more 

1  Compare  in  this  connection  the  standpoint  in  the  legal  systems 
of  the  peoples  amongst  whom  the  development  described  in  the  last 
chapter  ran  its  course,  for  the  most  part  free  from  the  influence  of  the 
spirit  of  Roman  law.  A  recent  writer  dealing  with  jurisprudence  in 
the  United  States,  summarises  characteristic  differences  between  the 
standpoint  in  the  systems  of  the  Latin  nations  of  Europe  and  those  of 
the  English-speaking  peoples  in  general.  The  former  peoples,  he 
points  out,  are  governed  by  their  executives  ;  the  latter  by  their 
judges.  With  the  latter  the  judiciary  is  independent  ;  with  the  former 
it  is  more  or  less  the  servant  of  the  executive.  Latin  law  is  always 
codified  ;  the  common  law  of  the  English-speaking  peoples  cannot  be 
so  treated.  The  conspicuous  figure  in  a  court  of  the  former  peoples  is 
the  judge  dispensing  justice  ;  in  a  court  of  the  latter  peoples  the  lawyer 
fighting  for  it.  "The  basic  difference  between  the  two  systems  of 
jurisprudence  is  that  the  one  accords  privileges,  while  the  other  pro- 
tect! rights"  (W.  S.  I-ogan,  Forum,  xxvi.). 


362  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

profoundly  in  bringing  about  the  existing  conditions 
of  the  exploitation  of  the  world  by  the  advanced 
peoples,  than  the  application  of  science  to  the  general 
affairs  of  life.  But  the  results  obtained  in  applied 
science  are  themselves  the  product  of  certain  condi- 
tions in  thought  and  in  the  cultivation  of  pure  science 
which  have  only  recently  come  to  prevail  in  our  civili- 
sation. They  are  conditions  which  have  resulted  di- 
reetly  from  the  ascendency  in  our  civilisation  of  the 
conception  that  emerged  out  of  the  conflict  described 
in  the  last  chapter. 

It  is  only  necessary  to  look  through  the  current 
literature  of  the  European  peoples  to  realise  how  pecul- 
iar and  how  strictly  circumscribed  these  conditions 
in  reality  are.  If  we  regard,  in  the  first  instance,  the 
existing  educational  controversies  of  the  peoples  who 
have  not  passed  through  the  development  described  in 
the  last  chapter  it  may  be  perceived,  when  all  due 
allowance  is  made  for  explanations  that  may  be  offered, 
how  the  scope  of  research  and  inquiry  has  remained 
restricted  on  every  hand  by  the  standards  that  have 
continued  to  prevail.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  when 
the  mind  is  carried  in  the  opposite  direction  it  is  con- 
fronted with  a  fact  scarcely  less  significant.  This  is 
the  inevitableness  with  which  a  purely  intellectual  de- 
mand for  freedom  carries  us  back  once  more  to  a  mere 
theory  of  the  interests  of  the  individuals  comprised 
within  the  limits  of  political  consciousness.  For  as 
we  see  how  inherent  in  the  problem  of  human  evolu- 
tion is  the  fact  that  there  is  not,  and  that  there  never 
can  be,  any  purely  intellectual  sanction  for  the  sub- 
mission of  the  individual  to  a  world-process  in  which 
he  has  absolutely  no  interest ;  so  we  see  that  a  purely 


X  THE   MODERN   WORLD-CONFLICT  363 

intellectual  demand  for  freedom  of  thought  must  al- 
ways, in  the  last  resort,  be  bounded  by  the  claims  and 
tyrannies  of  interests  within  the  limits  of  political  con- 
sciousness. We  return,  in  short,  quickly  and  inevita- 
bly under  such  standards  to  schemes  like  those  of 
"the  scientific  breeding  of  the  human  race,"  and  that 
class  of  proposals  with  which  the  Greeks  were  so 
familiar,1  the  inner  mark  and  meaning  of  which  is 
simply  the  ascendency  of  the  present  in  the  evolu- 
tionary process. 

We  are,  in  short,  confronted  amongst  the  advanced 
peoples  with  the  almost  startling  fact,  as  underlying 
the  conditions  of  intensity  towards  which  these  peo- 
ples move,  that  the  principles  of  intellectual  tolerance, 
just  as  the  principles  of  religious  tolerance,  and  —  as 
we  shall  see  directly  —  the  principles  of  political  tol- 
erance, can  only  be  held,  in  the  last  resort,  as  a  con- 
viction of  the  religious  consciousness.  They  must 
proceed,  that  is  to  say,  from  a  sense  of  responsibility 
to  principles  transcending  the  claim  of  any  system  of 
ideas,  of  thought,  of  knowledge,  of  authority,  or  even 
of  welfare,  embodied  within  the  limits  of  political  con- 
sciousness.2 To  the  emancipated  intellect,  which  has 
completely  divested  itself  of  the  bitterness  engendered 

l  Cf.  Plato,  Rep.  V. 

8  Nothing  is  the  cause  of  deeper  misunderstandings  between  the 
English  mind  and  the  French  mind,  in  the  existing  conditions  of  the 
world,  than  the  adhesion  at  times  of  the  French  people  to  the  principle 
that  loyalty  to  the  State,  or  to  its  institutions,  or  to  parties,  or  even  to 
the  welfare  of  individuals,  should  he  held  to  override  loyalty  to  the 
deeper-lying  principles  of  our  social  evolution  which  transcend  the  lim- 
its of  political  consciousness.  The  difference  of  standards  within  our 
civilisation  in  this  respect  is  already  so  marked,  that  it  may  often  be 
distinguished  in  art  as  expressed  in  literature.  For  instance,  a  standard 


364  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

in  the  protracted  struggle  maintained  against  science 
through  the  ecclesiastical  era  in  Western  history,  no 
conclusion  appears  to  be  more  clearly  involved  in  the 
modern  evolutionary  hypothesis  than  that,  in  the  ab- 
sence of  this  condition,  there  is  not  to  be  discovered 
any  cause  inherent  in  the  intellect  itself  which  could 
prevent  human  activities  from  being  again  shut  up  in 
the  tyrannies  of  interests  defined  within  the  limits  of 
political  consciousness. 

The  influence  of  the  condition  here  described  on 
all  the  activities  of  the  human  mind  amongst  the  ad- 
vanced peoples  has  been  profound.  It  has  operated 
towards  the  freeing  of  every  capacity  and  equipment, 
and  towards  the  gradual  intensification  of  all  the  con- 
ditions of  progress.  It  has  given  to  every  department 
of  inquiry  and  research  the  right  to  carry  its  results 
up  to  that  utmost  limit  at  which  they  are  controlled 
only  by  the  results  obtained  in  other  departments  of 
inquiry  or  activity  with  equal  freedom.  The  results 
already  obtained  have  been  so  great  that  the  prestige 
of  them  has  come,  almost  insensibly,  to  affect  all  the 
standards  of  our  civilisation.  Nevertheless,  it  must 
not  be  forgotten  that  many  of  the  peoples  included 
in  our  civilisation,  who  have  been  influenced,  have 
accepted  the  results  only  as  Eastern  races  have  ac- 

common  in  the  literature  of  the  novel  in  France  is  one  in  accordance 
with  which  loyalty  to  the  welfare  of  the  local  or  personal  is  represented 
as  opposed  to  this  deeper  social  principle,  while  it  is  nevertheless  pre- 
sented by  the  artist  as  the  overruling  motive  with  which  the  reader's 
sympathies  are  expected  to  be  enlisted.  Employed  by  Rudyard  Kipling 
in  his  earlier  writings  (probably  under  the  influence  of  his  Indian  envi- 
ronment), the  effect  on  the  general  English  mind,  e.g.  in  the  tale  Thrown 
Away,  is  so  foreign,  that  it  quite  interferes  with  the  artistic  result  as 
intended  by  the  writer. 


X  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  365 

cepted  Western  civilisation.  They  have  copied  them 
without  accepting  the  principles  on  which  they  rest ; 
and  without  going  through  the  intervening  stage  of 
development.  It  is,  therefore,  always  necessary  to 
remember  that,  if  we  have  been  right  so  far,  it  must 
be  taken  that,  in  the  last  resort,  the  maintenance  of 
the  principles  to  which  the  results  in  question  are  due, 
depends,  as  yet,  almost  entirely  on  the  peoples  who 
have  passed  through  the  full  stress  of  the  develop- 
ment described  in  the  preceding  chapters. 

No  observer,  preserving  his  position  of  detachment 
and  looking  through  the  history  of  thought  and  re- 
search in  England,  the  United  States,  and  Germany 
for  a  century  past,  can  doubt  the  enormous  potentiality 
in  the  world  of  the  principles  with  which  he  sees  the 
human  mind  therein  being  equipped.  Whatever  the 
attitude  may  be  towards  the  principles  underlying 
the  change  in  standards  which  has  taken  place  in  our 
civilisation,  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  influence 
of  the  spirit  that  is  behind  the  modern  search  after 
truth  in  intensifying  all  the  conditions  of  progress,  or 
of  the  fact  that  the  peoples  amongst  whom  that  spirit 
first  became  dominant  have  received  a  long  start  in 
the  modern  world-process. 

But  so  far  only  the  general  tendencies  resulting 
from  the  development  described  in  the  last  chapter 
have  been  considered.  It  is  as  we  watch  the  larger 
process  of  emancipation  which  has  been  inherent  in 
our  civilisation  from  the  beginning,  broadening  out  at 
last  under  these  conditions  into  the  full  stream  of 
modern  tendencies,  that  we  begin  to  realise  the  real 
nature  of  the  forces  making  for  the  intensity  of  the 
social  process  amongst  the  advanced  peoples.  It  is 


366  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

when  we  get  to  the  heart  of  the  political  revolution, 
which  for  nearly  two  centuries  has  been  in  progress 
in  Western  society  —  that  revolution  which  has  been 
bringing  the  people  into  the  modern  world-conflict 
on  conditions  of  equal  political  rights,  and  which  is 
carrying  us  into  the  midst  of  an  era  of  economic 
transition  undoubtedly  pregnant  of  changes  more 
transforming  than  any  that  have  been  hitherto  ex- 
perienced—  that  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  full  reach 
of  the  causes  which  are  producing  the  stress  of  con- 
ditions in  that  phase  of  the  evolutionary  process 
unfolding  itself  beneath  our  eyes  in  modern  history. 
In  the  realm  of  political  affairs  the  conception  of 
responsibility  to  a  principle  rising  superior  to  the 
claims  of  all  systems  of  thought,  of  knowledge,  of 
authority,  or  of  welfare  embodied  within  the  limits 
of  political  consciousness,  has  proved  the  most  radical 
principle  that  has  ever  operated  in  the  world.  It  is 
the  ultimate  cause  behind  that  organic  process  of 
change  which  Maine  saw  reversing  the  universal 
order  of  the  past  in  the  phenomenon  of  modern  De- 
mocracy.1 It  has  broken,  in  turn,  the  theory  of  abso- 
lute right  in  the  Church,  in  the  Sovereign,  in  the  State. 
It  is  destined  to  break  the  absolute  right  of  Majori- 
ties, and  even  of  Force.  It  has  brought  to  the  birth, 
in  the  long  process  of  the  centuries,  the  modern  con- 
ception of  the  People.  And  only  the  vision  of  the 
few  has  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  nature  of  the  trans- 
formation inherent  in  it,  as  it  moves  slowly  in  our 
time  towards  the  challenge  of  the  ascendency  of  the 
present  in  the  economic  process  throughout  the 
world. 

1  Popular  Government,  \.  and  iv. 


x  THE  MODERN   WORLD-CONFLICT  367 

Now  it  may  be  observed  that  the  first  purely  politi- 
cal cause  which  has  operated  directly  towards  the 
production  of  the  present  intensity  of  the  social  pro- 
cess in  Western  history,  is  one  which  is  rarely  dis- 
cussed in  any  detail,  and  is  often  not  mentioned, 
in  treatises  on  social  or  economic  subjects.  This  is 
the  fact  of  the  recent  accession,  by  the  masses  of  the 
people,  to  political  power,  as  secured  to  them  by 
universal  suffrage  or  by  a  political  franchise  very 
widely  extended.  This  revolution,  the  significance 
of  which  underlies  all  existing  controversies  as  to 
the  organisation  of  society  and  the  prevailing  dis- 
tribution of  wealth,  dates  back  for  its  beginning 
scarcely  more  than  a  century.  In  England,  where 
parliamentary  government,  almost  in  its  modern 
form,  appears  to  carry  us  back  to  Cromwell  and 
Locke,  it  was  not  till  1832  that  the  franchise  was 
conferred  on  the  middle  classes,  and  not  till  1867  and 
1885  that  it  was  extended  so  as  to  include  the  great 
bulk  of  the  people.  On  the  continent  of  Europe  the 
period  mentioned  has  witnessed  the  establishment  of 
universal  suffrage,  or  forms  of  electoral  franchise 
falling  little  short  of  it,  in  France,  Germany,  Italy, 
Holland,  Belgium,  Spain,  and  other  less  important 
States;  Germany  in  1867  and  1871,  Spain  in  1890, 
and  Belgium  in  1893,  being  amongst  the  more  impor- 
tant countries  which  have  recently  adopted  it.  Even 
the  government  of  the  United  States  at  the  period  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  in  1776  was  virtu- 
ally aristocratic,  and  it  continued  to  be  so  till  after 
the  close  of  the  revolution  in  1783,  up  to  which  pe- 
riod a  property  qualification  for  the  exercise  of 
political  power  was  still  required  in  every  State. 


368  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

Throughout  the  greater  part  of  our  Western  world, 
and  in  the  midst  of  the  greatest  accumulation  of  every 
form  of  human  energy,  wealth,  and  resources  that  the 
world  has  seen,  there  has,  therefore,  taken  place 
within  the  space  of  little  more  than  a  century,  and 
for  the  most  part  silently  beneath  the  surface  of 
society,  one  of  the  greatest  and  most  significant 
political  transformations  recorded  in  history. 

Now  amongst  a  certain  section  of  modern  peoples 
one  of  the  commonest  of  political  assumptions  is  that 
of  the  right  of  every  man  to  voting  power  irrespec- 
tive of  position,  or  of  creed,  or  of  opinion ;  and 
further,  and  more  important,  of  the  right  of  every 
man  to  equal  voting  power  irrespective  of  the  nature 
or  the  amount  of  his  interest  in  the  State. 

If  we  look  closely  at  this  conception,  it  may  be 
perceived  that  it  is  only  our  familiarity  with  it 
which  leads  us  to  overlook  the  fact  that  not  only  is  it 
altogether  exceptional  in  the  world,  but  that  there 
is  no  real  explanation  of  it  to  be  found  in  any  exist- 
ing theory  of  the  purely  political  State.  It  is  a  con- 
ception which  has  been  held  by  only  a  comparatively 
small  number  of  people  during  an  insignificant  space 
in  recent  history.  Even  by  no  inconsiderable  pro- 
portion of  persons  amongst  the  advanced  peoples  of 
the  present  day  the  right  of  every  man  to  equal  vot- 
ing power,  irrespective  either  of  his  intelligence,  or 
of  his  capacity,  or  of  the  amount  of  his  property  in 
the  State,  is  but  little  understood.  Nay,  it  is  often 
covertly  resented,  and  is  outwardly  accepted  in  prin- 
ciple only  because  the  prestige  of  the  results  obtained 
by  the  advanced  peoples  amongst  whom  it  has  pre- 
vailed has  created  a  tendency  in  affairs  against  which 


X  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  369 

it  is  felt  to  be  useless  to  struggle.  But  down  into 
the  recent  past,  in  the  almost  universal  opinion  of  the 
world,  the  conception  would  undoubtedly  have  pre- 
sented itself,  as  it  has  actually  done  in  our  time  to 
Nietzsche,  and  as  it  still  does  to  the  overwhelming 
proportion  of  our  fellow-creatures  in  the  world,  simply 
as  one  so  inherently  absurd  as  to  be  beyond  the 
bounds  of  reasonable  discussion. 

When  we  look  back  over  the  history  of  the  process 
in  which  the  conception  has  risen  into  ascendency  in 
politics,  it  presents  many  remarkable  features.  It  is 
this  conception  of  equal  political  weight  in  the  State 
which,  we  may  perceive,  has  broken  down  the  social 
and  political  barriers  erected  against  the  people  by 
the  power-holding  classes  in  the  past.  It  is  this  con- 
ception which,  in  bringing  the  people  into  the  social 
conflict  on  terms  of  equality,  has  produced  the  envi- 
ronment in  which  the  causes  already  discussed  have 
been  able  to  achieve  in  the  existing  world  the 
remarkable  results  described.  It  is  this  conception 
which  has  been  the  direct  political  cause,  more  than 
any  other,  tending  to  the  intensity  of  modern  condi- 
tions. It  is  this  conception  which  is  producing  those 
vast  changes  in  the  distribution  of  wealth  to  which 
current  economic  science  is  adjusting  its  theories. 
And,  last  of  all,  it  is  this  conception  which  constitutes 
the  cause,  upon  the  continued  ascendency  of  which 
in  politics,  every  existing  political  reformer  including 
the  Marxian  Socialist  is  counting  for  the  realisation 
of  that  larger  social  and  economic  transformation 
which  is  perceived  to  lie  in  the  future. 

If  it  be  asked  to  what  reason  we  must  attribute  the 
ascendency  in  Western  history  of  this  conception, 

2B 


3/0  WESTERN   CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

entirely  new  and  altogether  exceptional  in  the  world, 
—  a  conception  which  the  almost  universal  opinion  of 
the  world  down  to  the  recent  past  would  have  re- 
garded as  absurd,  and  yet  a  conception,  to  all  appear- 
ance, fundamentally  related  to  the  central  meaning 
of  that  phase  of  the  evolutionary  process  in  the 
midst  of  which  we  are  living  —  there  can  be  no  doubt 
as  to  what  the  answer  must  be.  The  cause  which 
has  led  to  the  ascendency  among  the  advanced 
peoples  of  the  conception  of  the  right  of  every  man 
to  equal  voting  power,  irrespective  of  birth,  of  creed, 
of  intelligence,  of  capacity,  or  even  of  the  nature  or 
amount  of  his  interest  in  the  State,  has  beyond  doubt 
no  relation  to  any  theory  of  the  State  bounded  by  the 
limits  of  political  consciousness.  It  simply  cannot  be 
fitted  into  any  theory  of  society  based  on  the  relation 
to  each  other  of  existing  interests  in  the  State.  In 
the  end  it  overleaps  all  such  considerations.  In  the 
last  analysis  we  perceive  that  it  undoubtedly  results 
from  the  existence  in  men's  minds  of  a  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility to  each  other  which  is  projected  beyond 
all  the  objects  for  which  the  political  State  is  con- 
ceived as  existing. 

When,  in  short,  we  reach  the  cause  which  has 
given  men  political  equality  irrespective  of  all  condi- 
tions and  qualifications,  we  stand  once  more  in  the 
presence  of  the  principle  we  have  been  discussing 
throughout.  In  other  words,  strange  though  it  may 
appear,  the  fundamental  principle  of  political  toler- 
ance, which  is  implied  in  this  theory  of  equality,  can, 
like  the  fundamental  principle  of  intellectual  toler- 
ance—  and  whether  the  individual  be  conscious  of 
it  or  not  —  only  be  held  by  the  world  as  an  ultimate 


x  THE  MODERN   WORLD-CONFLICT  3/1 

conviction  of  the  religious  consciousness.  It  is,  that 
is  to  say,  the  principle  through  which  the  evolutionary 
process  is  accomplishing  the  subordination  of  the 
present  to  a  future  transcending  the  content  of  politi- 
cal consciousness,  which  constitutes  the  controlling 
cause  behind  all  the  outward  phenomena  of  political 
equality  in  the  modern  world. 

When,  in  the  light  of  this  circumstance,  we  look 
more  closely  at  the  political  development  proceeding 
in  the  State,  we  may  perceive  the  larger  meaning 
that  certain  features  of  it  begin  now  to  assume  before 
the  mind.  We  may  even  go  so  far  as  to  compress 
into  a  formula  the  clue  to  the  political  process  in 
modern  society.  What  we  see  is  that  it  is  along  the 
line  where  the  ethical  phenomena,  proceeding  from 
the  existence  in  men's  minds  of  this  sense  of  responsi- 
bility to  principles  transcending  their  conception  of 
the  State,  have  come  into  conflict  with  occupying 
interests,  sheltering  themselves  behind  the  State,  that 
the  stress  of  the  forward  movement  is  developing  itself 
in  modern  politics. 

Still  confining  observation  to  the  history  of  the 
English-speaking  peoples,  it  may  accordingly  be  dis- 
tinguished how,  from  the  conclusion  of  the  conflict 
described  in  the  last  chapter  down  to  the  present  day, 
it  is  this  principle  operating  in  men's  minds  which 
has  set  them  to  struggle  in  grim  and  devoted  strife 
against  that  almost  equally  determined  resistance 
which  every  occupying  interest  in  the  State  has 
offered  to  the  modern  spirit.  It  is  sometimes  taken 
for  granted  that  the  conditions  of  modern  progress 
are  but  the  expression  of  tendencies  that  have  always 
existed  in  the  world.  But,  as  Maine  insists,  "it  is 


372  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

indisputable  that  much  the  greatest  part  of  mankind 
has  never  shown  a  particle  of  desire  that  its  civil 
institutions  should  be  improved  since  the  moment 
when  external  completeness  was  first  given  to  them 
by  their  embodiment  in  some  permanent  record.  " 1 
It  has  only  been,  in  short,  a  cause  more  elemental 
than  itself  that  has  overcome  that  unrelenting  resist- 
ance to  change  in  the  vested  order  of  the  world, 
which  Maine  correctly  distinguished  to  be  the  uni- 
versal characteristic  of  all  human  society  down  into 
the  existing  era  of  Western  civilisation.  This  is  why 
that,  despite  the  transforming  results  accomplished 
by  the  modern  spirit  among  the  English-speaking 
peoples,  it  is,  nevertheless,  at  the  same  time  true, 
extraordinary  as  the  statement  may  seem,  that,  to 
use  the  words  of  a  recent  English  writer,  "there  is  in 
the  English  character  scarcely  anything  in  sympathy 
with  the  spirit  of  modern  Liberalism."2  The  native 
Teutonic  habit  of  mind,  underlying  the  English, 
American,  and  German  character,  represents,  of  ne- 
cessity, certain  qualities  —  tenacity  of  purpose,  deter- 
mination in  the  presence  of  opposition,  love  for  action, 
and  hunger  for  power,  all  tending  to  express  them- 
selves through  the  State  —  which  were  the  necessary 
equipment  of  that  military  type  which  has  won  in  the 
supreme  stress  of  Natural  Selection  its  right  of  place 
as  the  only  type  able  to  hold  the  stage  of  the  world  in 
the  long  epoch  during  which  the  present  is  destined 
to  pass  under  the  control  of  the  future.  But,  for  the 
same  cause,  it  is  simply  a  matter  of  course  that  there 
should  be  in  such  a  type  of  character,  of  its  own  nature, 

1  Ancient  Law,  c.  i. 

a  "  The  Future  of  Liberalism,"  Macmillarfs  Magazine,  vol.  Ixxii. 


x  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  373 

"  scarcely  anything  in   sympathy  with   the   spirit  of 
modern  Liberalism." 

The  modern  progressive  movement  in  politics 
among  the  English-speaking  peoples  has,  therefore, 
represented  a  dynamic  force  in  history  so  immense 
that  the  ordinary  mind  has  little  or  no  conception  of 
it.  Nothing  is  more  common  in  current  economic 
studies,  than  to  see  the  prolonged  movement,  which 
resulted  in  the  establishment  of  the  principles  of  free- 
trade  in  England,  discussed  as  if  it  sprang  simply 
from  the  conscious  and  organised  effort  of  parties 
and  interests  in  the  State  to  further  their  own  selfish 
ends.1  Like  nearly  every  other  movement  in  our 
civilisation  it  has  become  in  its  turn,  as  we  shall  see 
in  the  next  chapter,  deeply  involved  in  the  toils  of  the 
ascendant  present.  But  in  that  phase  in  which  it 
represented  the  attempt  in  England  to  break  the 
rule  of  the  feudal  past  in  the  economic  process  in 
society,  the  springs  of  its  life  came  from  a  cause 
deeper,  more  far-reaching,  and  more  elemental  than 
class-selfishness.  So  true  is  this,  that  it  is  almost 
startling  to  be  reminded  at  the  present  day  that  Adam 
Smith,  the  formulator  of  the  free-trade  doctrine  in 
England,  regarded  the  interests  against  it  as  so  gen- 
eral, so  powerful,  and  so  determined,  that  he  de- 
spaired of  their  resistance  ever  being  overcome,  and 
that  he  declared  that  "to  expect  that  the  doctrine 
would  ever  become  a  practice  in  the  United  Kingdom 
was  as  absurd  as  to  expect  the  establishment  of  a 

1  Even  in  studies  like  those  of  Professor  Davidson's,  of  the  trade 
relations  between  England  and  her  colonies,  we  may  distinguish  some- 
thing of  this  spirit.  Cf.  "  England's  Commercial  Policy  towards  her 
Colonies  since  the  Treaty  of  Paris,"  Political  Science  Quarterly,  vol.  xiv. 


374  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

Utopia."  1  The  forces  behind  the  forward  movement 
in  England  eventually  bore  down  all  opposition  before 
them.  But  they  were  forces  proceeding  from  a  cause 
far  more  radical  than  any  conscious  theory  of  interests 
in  the  State.  They  were  the  forces  of  which  we  catch 
sight  in  Morley's  description  of  Bright  and  Cobden 
in  the  midst  of  the  agitation  in  England  as  presenting 
a  spectacle  'which  had  about  it  something  of  the 
apostolic'2 — "the  two  men  who  had  only  become 
orators  because  they  had  something  to  say  .  .  .  the 
two  plain  men  leaving  their  homes  and  their  business, 
and  going  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land  to 
convert  the  nation,"  as  to  a  new  religion.3 

The  general  observer  sees  the  forward  movement 
in  politics  carrying  along  with  it  a  thousand  interests 
and  a  multitude  of  sub-movements,  the  selfish  objects 
of  which  its  direction  for  the  time  being  happens  to 
favour.  But  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  not  in 
the  superficial  conclusions  often  drawn  from  these 
appearances  have  we  the  meaning  of  Western  Liber- 
alism. Deep  below  the  surface  of  such  phenomena, 
the  cause  which  is  carrying  development  forward  has 
been  the  expression  of  a  force  unparalleled  in  his- 
tory ;  a  force  which  has  always  represented,  in  the 
last  resort,  a  sense  of  responsibility  in  men's  minds 
outweighing  the  claims  of  all  political  interests  and  a 
quality  of  conviction  transcending  the  content  of  every 
political  creed. 

We  are  apt,  in  short,  to  regard  the  existence  and 
results  of  modern  Liberalism  as  something  inherent 

lHThe  Manchester  School,"  Diet,  of  Political  Economy,  vol.  iL 
a  Life  of  Richard  Cobden,  vol.  i.  ix. 
8  Ibid. 


x  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  375 

in  the  political  organism  as  such.1  But  we  forget,  as 
a  writer  already  quoted  reminds  us  of  England,  "  the 
tremendous  struggles  that  were  needed  before  the 
crust  of  sluggishness  and  prejudice  could  be  broken 
through ;  the  lives  willingly  sacrificed,  the  careers 
ruined,  the  fortunes  flung  away,  the  imprisonment  and 
dragooning,  the  ostracism  and  social  persecution 
readily  accepted  before  a  Liberal  party  in  the  modern 
sense  could  come  into  existence."2  No  fact  has  left 
a  more  lasting  mark  on  the  English  mind  in  its  rela- 
tion to  politics  than  this  deep-seated  conviction  that 
Western  Liberalism  as  a  political  creed  is,  in  the  last 
resort,  a  creed,  not  of  ease  and  of  conscious  political 
Utilitarianism,  but  of  sacrifice  ;  the  principles  of  which 
cannot  be  confined  within  any  theories  of  interests  in 
the  State  as  such.  In  every  serious  crisis  through 
which  the  advancing  political  movement  has  passed 
in  England,  the  introspection  of  this  conviction  may 
be  traced  in  its  results,  as  by  a  broad  pathway,  through 
the  literature  of  the  transition  period.  The  deeper  we 
get  into  the  causes  behind  the  modern  progressive 
movement,  not  only  in  England  but  equally  in  the 
United  States,  the  more  clearly  do  we  see  that  it  is  in 
this  circumstance  that  we  have  the  real  cause  which 

1  The  only  really  scientific  and  absolutely  destructive  criticism  of  the 
Marxian  conception  of  modern  society  is  that  which,  going  far  beyond 
any  examination  of  the  economic  theories  associated  with  the  name  of 
Marx  brings  home  to  the  mind  a  vivid  realisation  of  the  fixed  impossi- 
bility of  getting  a  scientific  conception  of  society  out  of  any  theory  of 
interests  in  the  State  bounded  by  the  limits  of  political  consciousness. 
All  such  conceptions  have    been    reduced  to  meaninglessness    in    the 
presence  of  the  vaster  import  of  the  evolutionary  process  as  we  are  com- 
ing now  to  understand  it,  —  namely,  as  a  process  slowly  accomplishing 
the  subordination  of  the  present  to  the  future. 

2  "  The  Future  of  Liberalism,"  Afaemiliari't  Magazine,  voL  Ixxii. 


376  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

differentiates  at  the  present  day  the  forward  move- 
ment in  progress  among  the  advanced  peoples  from 
the  same  movement  as  we  see  it  amongst  the  peoples 
of  the  countries  in  which  the  development  described 
in  the  last  chapter  has  not  been  accomplished. 
Amongst  the  latter  we,  as  a  rule,  appear  to  see  the 
forward  movement  under  its  various  phases,  whether 
moderate  or  extreme,  attempting  a  task  the  successful 
accomplishment  of  which  —  if  the  view  we  have  taken 
of  the  meaning  of  the  evolutionary  hypothesis,  as  ap- 
plied to  society,  be  correct  —  is  impossible,  namely, 
the  task  of  getting  a  scientific  conception  of  society 
out  of  a  theory  of  interests  in  the  State  bounded  by 
the  limits  of  political  consciousness.  Deep  down  in 
the  subconsciousness  of  the  progressive  movement 
amongst  the  advanced  peoples,  we  have  always  to 
deal,  in  the  last  resort,  with  a  fact  of  different  signifi- 
cance. In  every  period  of  upheaval  it  is  to  be  en- 
countered in  the  general  mind  in  the  shape  of  a 
conviction  widely  and  instinctively  held,  that  while 
Western  Liberalism  is  the  force  which  is  transforming 
all  political  institutions,  it  is  itself  a  thing  which  is 
ultimately  outside  of  all  theories  of  the  State,  and 
independent  of,  and  superior  to,  all  interests  in  the 
State  on  whatever  scale  they  may  be  represented. 

This  is  the  ultimate  cause  why  the  meaning  of 
Modern  Liberalism  in  England  and  the  United  States 
goes  far  deeper  than  political  forms  and  institutions. 
It  represents  a  cause  which,  while  acting  on  every 
institution  within  the  State,  is  nevertheless  ultimately 
related  to  principles  transcending  the  consciousness 
of  all  of  them  alike.  Whatever  the  outward  forms, 
it,  therefore,  holds  every  tendency  to  absolutism  in 


X  THE  MODERN   WORLD^ONFLICT  377 

continued  check.  It  interposes,  as  it  were,  between 
the  present  and  the  future  a  principle  which  prevents 
every  natural  despotism  in  thought  and  action  from 
exercising  its  inherent  tendency  to  again  shut  down 
upon  us.  It  represents,  in  short,  the  progressive 
development,  as  it  has  reached  the  domain  of  poli- 
tics, of  the  great  antinomy  we  have  traced  through 
Western  history. 

If  the  examination  be  continued  beyond  the  intel- 
lectual and  political  causes  which  are  thus  making  for 
the  intensity  of  the  process  of  progress  amongst  the 
advanced  peoples,  and  the  scrutiny  be  carried  now 
into  the  midst  of  the  conditions  in  which  we  see  West- 
ern development  moving  slowly  towards  the  challenge 
of  the  ascendency  of  the  present  in  the  economic  pro- 
cess in  all  its  phases  throughout  the  world,  the  inter- 
est of  the  spectacle  continues  to  increase.  If  we 
may  anticipate  for  a  moment  the  discussion  of  a  fea- 
ture to  be  fully  dealt  with  in  the  next  chapter,  it  may 
be  briefly  said  that  the  movement  in  which  the  Man- 
chester school  of  economics  in  England  endeavoured 
to  produce  the  conditions  of  free  competition  in  the 
world  was  from  the  beginning  involved  in  a  closed 
circle.  It  represented  little  more  than  the  struggle 
of  existing  economic  interests  to  free  themselves  from 
the  incumbrances  which  the  feudal  rule  of  the  past 
had  hitherto  imposed  on  society.  The  larger  mean- 
ing of  the  vast  struggle  between  the  future  and  the 
present  in  the  economic  process  had  as  yet  scarcely 
any  place  or  meaning  in  it.  It  is  not,  we  may  per- 
ceive, upon  free  competition  itself,  but  rather  upon 
the  first  crude  attempts  to  apply  it  to  human  affairs, 
that  the  mind  of  the  world  has  been  concentrated  in 


378  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

its  preoccupation  with  the  economic  situation  as  it  has 
been  presented  hitherto  in  the  theories  of  the  Man- 
chester school  in  England. 

What  we  are  coming  to  see,  therefore,  is  that  by 
the  policy  of  laissez-faire,  or  leaving  things  alone, 
with  which  the  Manchester  school  of  economics  first 
associated  the  conception  of  free  exchange  in  Eng- 
land, it  has  been  absolutely  impossible  to  get  such  a 
thing  in  the  modern  world  as  free  play  of  the  competi- 
tive forces.  The  present  is  still  everywhere  in  the 
ascendant.  The  tendency  which  has  projected  itself 
through  the  whole  fabric  of  economic  society  at  the 
present  time  represents,  in  short,  nothing  more  than 
the  survival  into  existing  conditions  of  that  universal 
principle  of  a  past  era  of  evolution  which  it  has  been 
the  destiny  of  our  civilisation  from  the  beginning  to 
interrupt  and  suspend ;  namely,  the  tendency  of  the 
strongest  competitive  force  to  become  absolute,  and 
so  to  restrain,  and  in  time  suppress,  the  conditions  of 
free  competition.  This,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  con- 
dition which  our  civilisation  has  already  broken  in 
thought,  in  knowledge,  and  in  politics,  in  the  long 
stress  of  the  centuries  of  conflict  already  described. 
But  it  is  the  condition  which  still  remains  almost 
unregulated  and  unbroken  in  economics. 

There  runs,  accordingly,  it  may  be  seen,  through 
all  the  phases  of  current  economic  development  one 
consistent  and  integrating  principle.  The  story  of 
the  economic  conflict  in  modern  history  is  now  in  turn 
coming  to  be  simply  the  story  of  the  long-drawn-out 
struggle  between  two  opposing  forces  in  the  great 
antinomy,  the  course  of  which  we  have  traced  through 
Western  history.  On  the  one  side  we  have  repre- 


X  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  379 

sented  the  survival  of  the  old-world  law  of  an  earlier 
era  of  evolution,  through  which  every  existing  domi- 
nant force  endeavours,  in  its  own  interests,  to  shut 
down  in  the  present  upon  the  higher  potentialities  of 
society  in  the  future.  On  the  other  side,  we  have 
the  influence  of  the  fundamental  conception  inherent 
in  our  civilisation,  which,  in  gradually  projecting  the 
sense  of  human  responsibility  outside  the  limits  of  all 
political  creeds  and  interests,  is  —  in  economics  as 
already  in  thought  and  in  politics  —  slowly  breaking 
and  dissolving  all  the  closed  imperiums  in  which  the 
free  play  of  human  activities  would  otherwise  tend  to 
be  restrained  and  imprisoned. 

In  a  remarkable  study  published  shortly  before  his 
death,  Professor  Henry  Sidgwick,  in  examining  the 
relationship  between  political  economy  and  ethics,1 
succeeded  in  bringing  clearly  before  the  general  mind 
the  lines  along  which  this  principle  is  destined  to 
operate  in  producing  the  economic  transformation 
which  is  slowly  succeeding  the  revolution  already 
accomplished  in  politics,  and  the  effect  of  which 
must  be  everywhere  to  deepen  the  intensity  of  mod- 
ern conditions. 

Now  the  main  stream  of  tendency  in  economics 
which  is  producing  the  gradual  intensification  of  mod- 
ern conditions  may  be  presented  in  general  terms  as 
involving  the  same  ideal  as  in  an  earlier  stage  in  poli- 
tics. As  in  politics  the  movement  has  been  towards 
equal  political  rights  ;  so  in  economics  it  is  now  a 
movement  towards  equality  of  economic  opportunity. 
In  the  modern  world  it  has  already  become,  says  Pro- 

1 "  Political  Economy  and  Ethics,"  Diet,  of  Political  Economy,  vol.  iii. 


380  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

fessor  Sidgwick,  "an  ethical  postulate  that  the  distri- 
bution of  wealth  in  a  well-ordered  State  should  aim  at 
realising  political  justice."  1  Yet  in  the  era  of  unor- 
ganised and  unrestricted  competition  which  has  suc- 
ceeded the  prevalence  in  the  world  of  the  laissez-faire 
conceptions  with  which  the  standards  of  the  Man- 
chester school  of  free  exchange  became  associated, 
what  we  see  is,  says  Professor  Sidgwick  in  effect,  that 
society  is  struggling  with  the  fact  that  the  so-called 
free  exchange  of  the  past,  even  without  intentional 
fraud  or  coercion,  is  not  a  fair  exchange.  In  a  world 
in  which  the  interests  of  the  present  are  still  in  the 
ascendant  in  the  economic  process,  and  in  which  the 
strongest  competitive  forces  therefore  tend  in  the  end 
to  become  more  or  less  absolute,  there  cannot  really 
be  such  a  thing  as  fair  exchange  or  free  competition 
under  existing  conditions.  We  have,  therefore,  the 
two  sides  of  the  great  antinomy  in  Western  history 
once  more  slowly  but  clearly  beginning  to  define 
themselves.  On  the  one  side  we  have,  as  we  shall 
see  in  the  next  chapter,  all  the  colossal  forms  and 
organisations  through  which  the  ascendency  of  the 
present  is  tending  to  express  itself  in  the  existing 
economic  situation.  On  the  other  side  we  have  the 
simple  fact  that  amongst  the  advanced  peoples  it  has 
already  become  "an  ethical  postulate  that  the  distri- 
bution of  wealth  should  aim  at  realising  political 
justice."  As  Professor  Sidgwick  points  out,  the  result- 
ing inequality  of  opportunity  cannot,  in  consequence, 
be  justified  before  the  common  social  conscience.  It 
fails  to  satisfy  the  current  moral  consciousness,  to  an 

1  "  Political    Economy  and    Ethics,"  Diet,    of  Political    Economy, 
vol.  iii. 


x  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  381 

ever  increasing  degree,  that  one  party  should  be  in  a 
position  to  profit  not  only  by  inevitable  ignorance  or 
distress,  but  by  the  actual  disability  or  the  enforced 
disadvantage  of  the  other.1  A  deep-lying  but  grad- 
ually increasing  dualism  is,  therefore,  tending  to  de- 
velop itself  in  the  existing  economic  condition  of  the 
world. 

The  tremendous  reach  of  the  principle  just  enunci- 
ated, as  it  begins  to  work  in  modern  economic  devel- 
opment, may  not  be  immediately  perceived.  But 
that  it  is  bound  to  carry  us  as  far  in  the  economic 
process  as  it  has  already  carried  us  in  the  other  devel- 
opments that  have  taken  place  in  Western  history 
will  be  apparent  on  reflection.  It  is  the  influence  of 
the  same  sense  of  responsibility  projected  outside  the 
State  that  we  have  still  in  sight  ;  a  principle  which, 
acting  through  the  consciousness  of  society,  is,  in 
economics,  just  as  in  thought,  in  knowledge,  and  in 
politics,  gradually  interposing  between  the  present 
and  the  future  a  principle  which  operates  towards 
preventing  the  natural  despotisms  of  the  time  from 
exercising  their  inherent  tendency  to  close  in  upon 
us  in  the  present.  In  the  result  we  have,  therefore, 
the  gradually  increasing  tendency  towards  the  inter- 
ference of  society  with  the  principles  regulating  the 
affairs  of  modern  industry.  Beginning  with  the  rela- 
tions of  capital  to  labour,  it  has  resulted  in  the  ten- 
dency of  society  to  enable  the  worker  —  although  as 
yet  in  conditions  in  which  the  principles  of  a  past  era 
of  development  still  survive  in  great  strength  on  both 
sides  of  the  struggle- — to  reach  under  the  law  a  po- 
sition in  which  he  is  in  a  condition  to  take  part  on 

1 "  Political  Economy  and  Ethics,"  Did.  of/political  Economy,  vol.  iii. 


382  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

more  equal  terms  in  the  conflict  of  forces  going  on 
around  him.1  It  is  resulting  in  the  tendency  of 
society  to  equip  the  worker  in  the  competition  of  life 
more  and  more  efficiently  at  the  general  expense. 
But,  over  and  above  everything  else,  we  may  perceive 
that  this  conception,  as  all  the  circumstances  of  the 
modern  world-struggle  are  becoming  deeply  influ- 
enced by  the  emotion  of  social  justice,  is  slowly 
developing,  and  is  bound  to  continue  to  develop,  in 
the  State  itself  an  entirely  new  attitude  of  collective 
responsibility  towards  all  the  principles  regulating 
and  controlling  that  play  of  forces  of  which  modern 
business  and  industry  have  become  the  theatre. 

The  enormous  potentiality  of  the  antithesis  thus 
being  developed  in  current  economic  history,  and 
thus  presenting,  as  we  may  perceive,  but  the  latest 
phase  of  the  antinomy  of  which  we  have  traced  the 
development  through  Western  history,  is  calculated 
when  it  is  clearly  perceived  to  deeply  impress  the 
scientific  imagination.  To  appreciate  the  full  signifi- 
cance of  the  evolutionary  principle  which  is  at  work 
among  the  advanced  peoples,  it  is  necessary  to  look  as 
yet  rather  beyond  the  horizon  of  accepted  results,  and 
into  the  stress  of  those  conditions  of  the  street  and 
the  market-place,  in  which  the  new  forces  that  are 
striving  to  assert  themselves  already  impinge  on  the 
consciousness  of  the  individual.  The  problem  which 
Professor  Sidgwick  has  defined  presents  practically 
the  same  features  in  England  and  the  United  States. 
But  in  many  of  its  phases  it  has  already  reached  a 
more  advanced  development  in  the  latter  country. 

1Cf.  History  of  Trade  Unionism,  by  Sidney  and  Beatrice  Webb. 


x  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  383 

We  may  already  perceive,  for  instance,  how  pro- 
foundly and  inherently  antagonistic,  in  the  long  run, 
must  be  the  significance  of  the  acceptance  of  the 
ethical  postulate  "  that  the  distribution  of  wealth  in  a 
well-ordered  State  should  aim  at  realising  political 
justice,"  to  the  spirit  of  the  conditions  which,  under 
the  name  of  free  competition,  allows  a  private  citizen 
to  amass  a  fortune,  equal  in  capital  amount  to  the 
annual  revenue  of  a  first-class  State,  out  of  his  com- 
petitors or  customers.  The  conditions  themselves  ob- 
viously represent  the  ascendency  in  the  economic 
process  of  the  ruling  principle  of  the  era  of  evolution 
out  of  which  we  have  moved.  They  have  about  them 
an  inherent  aspect  of  elemental  barbarism  which  the 
modern  consciousness  cannot  be  expected  to  continue 
to  tolerate.  The  soul  of  the  social  question,  asserted 
Professor  Graham  Taylor,1  speaking  recently  of  ex- 
isting conditions  in  the  United  States,  which  will  not 
down,  and  which  will  have  to  be  met,  is  the  rising 
revolt  of  the  general  conscience  against  the  present 
ethical  dualism  in  trade  and  competition.  "Those 
who  live  protected  lives  under  the  shelter  of  assured 
incomes  can  little  imagine,"  said  the  same  writer, 
"the  stress  and  strain  of  an  increasing  multitude  who 
are  exposed  to  the  frightful  struggle  for  economic 
existence  both  in  the  ranks  of  capital  and  labour"  ;2 
and  the  result  of  the  prevailing  conditions  he  distin- 
guished to  be,  a  definite  and  increasing  tendency 
towards  a  condition  of  self-stultification  which,  already 
profoundly  felt,  must  in  the  end  become  insuffer- 

1  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  vol.  v.  3,  "  The  Social  Function  of 
ihe  Church." 

2  Ibid.:  compare  also  Wealth  against  Commonwealth,  by  II .  D.  Lloyd. 


384  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

able.1  It  is  impossible,  points  out  Professor  Shailer 
Mathews,  that  the  religious  consciousness  should  not 
sooner  or  later  see  the  inconsistency  between  its 
teaching  and  prevailing  forms  of  economic  oppression 
and  corruption,  by  whatever  euphemistic  synonym 
such  acts  may  be  described.2 

What  we  must  duly  note  on  all  hands,  is  how  the 
personal  sense  of  moral  responsibility,  transcending 
the  demands  of  any  political  Utilitarianism  of  the 
kind  imagined  by  Bentham  and  the  Mills,3  is  begin- 
ning to  express  itself  through  the  social  consciousness 
in  relation  to  the  economic  situation.  That  conscious- 
ness as  it  impinges  on  the  modern  world-conflict  is 
evidently,  under  this  influence,  becoming  profoundly 
moved  with  a  sense  of  responsibility  to  an  ideal  of 
social  justice  which  transcends  the  content  of  the 
consciousness  of  the  State.  How  the  sense  of  self- 
stultification  so  clearly  indicated  in  Professor  Sidg- 
wick's  statement,  as  involved  in  the  modern  social 
problem,  has  begun  to  painfully  haunt  the  individual, 
there  are  accumulating  signs  on  all  hands.  Whether 
we  agree  with  the  conclusions  to  which  many  current 
writers  desire  to  carry  us  or  not,  we  have  in  sight, 
as  will  be  seen,  clearly  defined,  the  nature  of  the 
tremendous  force  which  continues  to  be  represented 
in  the  antinomy  which  is  developed  in  Western  his- 
tory. We  see  in  it  a  cause  intensely  active,  perma- 

1  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  vol.  v.  3,  "  The  Social  Function  of 
the  Church."  Cf.  "  Relation  of  Wealth  to  Morals,"  World's  Work,*$o.2. 

2  "The  Church  and  the  Social  Movement,"  Am.  Jour.  Sociology. 

8  Cf.  An  Inquiry  concerning  the  Principles  of  florals,  by  David 
Hume,  pp.  237-431  (Works,  vol.  iv.  1826)  ;  Principles  of  Morals  and 
Legislation,  by  Jeremy  Bentham,  chaps,  i.-ix. ;  Utilitarianism,  by  John 
Stuart  Mill,  chap.  iii.  ;  The  English  Utilitarians,  by  Leslie  Stephen, 
vol.  ii.  chap,  vii.,  vol.  iii.  chaps,  iv.-vi. 


x  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  385 

nent,  inherent,  and  fundamental,  and  unmistakably 
operating  to  prevent  the  absolutisms  inherent  in  the 
economic  situation  from  shutting  down  on  us  in  the 
present. 

No  one  who  has  grasped  the  real  nature  of  the 
organic  movement  that  has  come  down  through  our 
civilisation  will  be  likely  to  underrate  the  significance 
of  the  general  position  which  is  here  defining  itself. 
There  is  clearly  indicated  in  it,  as  we  shall  see  more 
fully  in  the  next  chapter,  the  lines  along  which  the 
great  antinomy  in  Western  history  will  continue  to 
develop.  But  to  realise  its  import  in  the  intensifica- 
tion of  modern  conditions  it  is  necessary  to  have  in 
mind  some  idea  of  the  nature  of  the  milieu  in  the  his- 
torical process  in  which  it  has  begun  to  operate. 

Now  as  the  principles  of  the  modern  more  empiri- 
cal school  of  political  economy  developed  in  England 
have  come  to  be  illuminated  by  the  results  obtained 
by  the  historical  methods  of  German  workers  like 
Roscher,  List,  Hildebrand,  Knies,  and  Schmoller,  the 
economic  life  of  our  civilisation  has  begun  to  present 
to  view  the  outlines  of  a  large  organic  process  slowly 
unfolding  itself  in  Western  history  along  certain 
clearly-defined  lines  of  development.  The  leading 
principle  of  this  process  is  very  striking  ;  and  yet  it 
is  in  a  large  way  so  simple  that  it  may  readily  be 
grasped  by  the  general  mind  when  it  is  once  pointed 
out.  Put  into  a  few  words,  it  is  that  our  economic 
progress  represents  the  steps  in  a  slowly  ascending 
development  in  which  the  winning  systems  are  those 
within  which  the  economic  process  is  tending  to  reach 
the  highest  intensity  as  the  result  of  the  gradual  sub- 
ordination of  the  particular  to  the  universal. 

2C 


386  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

No  modern  worker  has  done  more  to  bring  into 
view  the  steps  in  the  process  by  which  this  result  is 
being  accomplished  than  Schmoller;  and  although 
the  economic  process  in  Germany,  in  the  conditions 
under  which  he  discusses  it,  is  still  some  stages 
behind  the  phase  it  has  already  reached  in  England 
and  the  United  States,  the  importance  of  his  work, 
in  enabling  us  the  more  thoroughly  to  grasp  the  full 
significance  of  the  antinomy  we  have  been  endeavour- 
ing to  describe,  is  scarcely  lessened  on  that  account. 

When  Schmoller  takes  up  the  economic  process  in 
Europe  at  the  period  of  the  break-up  of  feudalism,  the 
conditions  that  present  themselves,  as  the  veil  is 
drawn  aside  from  the  economic  life  of  the  world,  are 
remarkable.  We  are,  as  it  were,  transported  back 
again  into  the  midst  of  the  standards  and  principles 
of  the  ancient  civilisations.  These  have  now  all  their 
exact  counterparts  in  Europe,  in  the  economic  condi- 
tions of  the  early  mediaeval  town.  We  are,  it  is  true, 
no  longer  in  the  presence  of  the  military  city-State, 
regarding  all  outsiders  as  subjects  to  be  subdued  and 
exploited  by  military  force.  The  unit  throughout 
Europe  has  become  the  economic  life  of  the  town. 
But  it  is  the  economic  life  of  a  town  organised  strictly 
on  the  principles  of  the  ancient  State.  To  use  the 
striking  words  in  which  Schmoller  summarises  the 
result  of  his  researches,  "Each  separate  town  felt 
itself  to  be  a  privileged  community,  gaining  right 
after  right  by  struggles  kept  up  for  hundreds  of  years, 
and  forcing  its  way,  by  negotiation  and  purchase,  into 
one  political  and  economic  position  after  the  other. 
The  citizen -body  looked  upon  itself  as  forming  a 
whole,  and  a  whole  that  was  limited  as  narrowly  as 


X  THE   MODERN   WORLD-CONFLICT  387 

possible,  and  for  ever  bound  together.  It  received 
into  itself  only  the  man  who  was  able  to  contribute, 
who  satisfied  definite  conditions,  proved  a  certain 
amount  of  property,  took  an  oath,  and  furnished 
security  that  he  would  stay  a  certain  number  of  years. 
.  .  .  The  omnipotence  of  the  council  ruled  the  eco- 
nomic life  of  the  town,  when  in  its  prime,  with 
scarcely  any  limit ;  it  was  supported  in  all  its  action 
by  the  most  hard-hearted  town  selfishness  and  the 
keenest  town  patriotism,  —  whether  it  were  to  crush 
a  competing  neighbour  or  a  competing  suburb,  to  lay 
heavier  fetters  on  the  country  around,  to  encourage 
local  trade,  or  to  stimulate  local  industries."  l 

The  soul  of  this  policy  of  the  town  of  the  Middle 
Ages  may  be  perceived  at  a  glance.  It  aimed  at  pre- 
serving the  economic  life  of  the  town  as  a  protected 
area  existing  apart  from,  and  in  opposition  to,  the  rest 
of  the  world.  It  always,  says  Schmoller,  consisted 
simply  in  this  —  "  the  putting  of  fellow-citizens  at  an 
advantage,  and  of  competitors  from  the  outside  at  a 
disadvantage."2  In  the  furtherance  of  this  policy 
every  weapon  that  could  be  employed  was  pressed  into 
the  service  of  the  town.  Restrictive  taxes,  differen- 
tial tolls,  and  the  coercive  regulation  of  exports,  im- 
ports, and  currency  were  continually  resorted  to.  All 
the  resources  of  municipal  diplomacy,  of  constitutional 
struggle  between  the  political  orders,  and,  in  the  last 
resort,  of  violence,  were  employed  by  the  towns  to 
gain  their  ends.3  The  economic  town  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  throughout  Europe  formed,  in  short,  says 
Schmoller,  "a  complete  system  of  currency,  credit, 

1  The  Mercantile  System  and  its  Historical  Significance,  by  Gustav 
Schmoller  (ed.  W.  J.  Ashley),  pp.  7,  8.  2  Ibid.  "  Ibid.,  p.  10. 


388  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

trade,  tolls,  and  finance,  shut  up  in  itself."  It  was 
managed  as  a  united  whole,  its  centre  of  gravity  was 
exclusively  in  local  interests,  and  the  policy  which  it 
pursued  with  all  its  strength  was  to  maintain  the  area 
of  its  interests  at  war  with,  and  strictly  protected  from, 
the  competition  of  all  the  outside  world.1 

This  is  the  real  starting-point  of  the  economic  life 
of  the  civilisation  of  our  era — a  starting-point  at  which 
we  may  distinguish  that  the  ruling  principle  is  still 
the  same  as  that  upon  which  the  whole  social  fabric 
of  the  ancient  civilisations  was  reared.  The  develop- 
ment which  begins  gradually  to  succeed  to  this  condi- 
tion is  very  remarkable.  With  a  comprehensive  grasp 
of  the  facts  of  the  historical  process,  Schmoller  traces 
the  steps  by  which  this  exclusive  life  of  the  towns 
throughout  Europe  becomes  overlaid  by  the  economic 
life  of  ever  larger  and  larger  communities ;  these, 
however,  continuing  to  preserve,  for  the  time  being, 
the  same  attitude  of  self-sufficiency  against  the  world  ; 
while  they  had  won  freedom  of  economic  movement 
within  their  own  boundaries.  The  economic  life  of 
the  town  Schmoller  sees  expanding  in  this  manner, 
first  of  all  into  that  of  the  territory  —  a  unit  which 
had  for  its  characteristic  the  association  of  town  and 
country,  similarly  organised  for  war  with  other  terri- 
tories ;  then  into  that  of  the  national  State  organised 
on  a  like  principle  ;  then  into  that  of  the  mercantile 
system  organised  by  England  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury on  a  similar  basis,  and  now  in  process  of  imita- 
tion by  modern  Germany  in  many  of  its  features. 

If  we  look  closely  at  this  development  for  a  moment, 

1  The  Mercantile  System  and  its  Historical  Significance,  by  Gustav 
Schmoller  (ed.  W.  J.  Ashley),  p.  n. 


x  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  389 

there  are  certain  features  of  great  interest  in  it  which 
have  to  be  noticed.  In  the  first  place,  it  was  no  auto- 
matic process  unfolding  itself  without  stress  in  history. 
Every  step  in  it  was  resisted  —  and  not,  as  the  theories 
of  the  Manchester  school  might  have  led  us  to  sup- 
pose, resisted  mistakenly — by  the  interests  concerned. 
We  see  distinctly,  for  instance,  how  that  it  was  not, 
as  might  at  first  sight  be  assumed,  the  immediate 
economic  interest  of  the  towns  to  become  merged  in 
the  territories,  or  of  the  territories  in  turn  to  become 
merged  in  the  national  State.  So  clearly  was  this 
recognised  at  the  time  that  the  process  was  one  in 
which  the  fiercest  conflict  was  maintained  at  all  points 
by  the  particular  and  present  interests  which  these 
represented  as  against  the  larger  tendency  which  was 
overruling  them.1  In  obedience  to  the  cause  at  work, 
the  territorial  governments,  only  step  by  step,  and 
in  the  face  of  the  most  strenuous  opposition,  broke 
down  the  exclusive  economic  life  of  the  towns.2  Then 
followed  for  centuries  a  similar  economic  struggle  be- 
tween the  territory  and  the  State.  In  short,  says 
Schmoller,  "  the  whole  internal  history  of  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries,  not  only  in  Germany, 
but  everywhere  else,  is  summed  up  in  the  opposition 
of  the  economic  policy  of  the  State  to  that  of  the  town, 
the  district,  and  the  several  estates."8 

Of  the  essential  nature  of  the  two  leading  features 
of  this  development  there  can  be  no  doubt.  It  repre- 
sented, over  and  above  everything  else,  the  growing 
intensity  of  the  economic  process  as  the  barriers 
which  protected  against  outside  competition  were  one 

1  The  Mercantile  System  and  its  Historical  Significance,  by  Gustav 
Schmoller  (ed.  W.  J.  Ashley),  p.  22.  *  Ibid.,  p.  36.  *  Ibid.,  p.  50. 


390  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

by  one  broken  down,  and  the  area  of  economic  free- 
dom was  extended  in  larger  and  larger  communities. 
This  is  the  first  principle  represented.  The  second 
principle  is  equally  clear.  The  steps  which  led  to  this 
development  of  intenser  conditions  and  higher  effi- 
ciency within  the  ever-growing  areas  of  freedom  were, 
nevertheless,  certainly  not  considered  by  the  economic 
interests  concerned  to  represent  their  benefit.  It  in- 
volved the  principle  of  the  subordination  of  their  pres- 
ent and  particular  interests  to  the  larger  future  which 
the  whole  process  represented. 

What  was  the  nature  of  the  subordinating  cause 
here  represented  ?  Schmoller  gives  us  no  real  answer 
to  this  question.1  So  far  as  any  explanation  is  at- 

1  The  failure  at  this  point  is  the  characteristic  weakness  of  the  Ger- 
man Historical  School  of  Economics.  As  a  recent  writer  puts  it,  in 
words  which,  however,  must  be  held  to  apply  rather  to  Schmoller's 
predecessors :  "  The  insistence  on  data  could  scarcely  be  carried  to 
a  higher  pitch  than  it  was  carried  by  the  first  generation  of  the  Histori- 
cal school ;  and  yet  no  economics  is  farther  from  being  an  evolu- 
tionary science  than  the  received  economics  of  the  Historical  school. 
The  whole  broad  range  of  erudition  and  research  that  engaged 
the  energies  of  that  school  commonly  falls  short  of  being  science, 
in  that,  when  consistent,  they  have  contented  themselves  with  an  enu- 
meration of  data  and  a  narrative  account  of  industrial  development,  and 
have  not  presumed  to  offer  a  theory  of  anything  or  to  elaborate  their 
results  into  a  consistent  body  of  knowledge"  {Quarterly  Journal  of 
Economics,  vol.  xii. :  "  Why  is  Economics  not  an  Evolutionary  Science  ?  " 
(Thorstein  Veblen)).  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  interesting  to  note  how 
equally  characteristic  has  been  the  weakness  on  the  historical  side  of 
the  English  empirical  school  of  economics  which  has  come  down  through 
Adam  Smith  and  the  Manchester  school.  "  It  can  hardly  be  doubted," 
says  Professor  W.  J.  Ashley  ("  Historical  School  of  Economics,"  Diet. 
Pol.  Econ.},  "that  (Adam)  Smith's  frame  of  mind  was,  on  the  whole, 
essentially  unhistorical,  and  that  historical  narrative  and  inductive 
reasoning  were  with  him  subordinate  to  a  deductive  movement  of 
thought." 


X  THE   MODERN   WORLD-CONFLICT  391 

tempted,  he  simply  identifies  the  principle  with  a  ten- 
dency to  what  he  calls  State-making  or  Nation-making^ 
To  answer  the  question  we  must  turn  to  the  consid- 
eration of  the  economic  process  in  the  most  advanced 
phase  it  has  yet  attained,  namely,  as  we  see  it  repre- 
sented at  the  present  day,  principally  within  the  pale 
of  the  English-speaking  world. 

Now,  it  has  been  already  remarked  that  in  the  busi- 
ness and  industrial  life  of  the  United  States  at  the 
present  time,  the  fact  that  most  profoundly  impresses 
the  evolutionist,  when  he  perceives  its  relation  to  the 
future,  is  the  degree  of  intensity  tending  to  be  reached 
in  the  economic  process  in  that  country.  As  the  ob- 
server moves  from  the  Eastern  and  Middle  to  the 
Western  States,  a  conviction  of  the  enormous  poten- 
tiality in  the  future,  if  the  development  of  the  United 
States  continues  to  be  along  healthy  lines,  of  the  con- 
ditions making  towards  the  free  conflict  of  economic 
forces  which  he  sees  extending  from  the  Atlantic  to 
the  Pacific,  grows  upon  the  mind.  He  has  before  him 
what  he  realises  to  be,  beyond  doubt,  immeasurably 
the  most  important  area  hitherto  cleared  in  the  world 
within  which  the  conditions  of  such  freedom  are  tend- 
ing to  prevail.  Even  as  regards  the  conditions  of  free 
exchange,  it  is  within  this  area  that  there  has  already 
been  reached  the  largest  practical  application  in  the 
world  of  the  principle  of  Free  Trade. 

1  Schmoller  notices  at  the  beginning  that  the  process  of  economic 
assimilation  and  emancipation  proceeded  most  quickly  in  those  areas 
in  which  it  coincided  with  the  movement  towards  nationhood  (p.  16). 
At  the  stage  at  which  the  process  of  development  reached  the  mercan- 
tile system,  he  asserts  that,  "  I  he  essence  of  the  system  lies  not  in  some 
doctrine  of  money,  or  in  the  balance  of  trade  ;  not  in  tariff  barriers, 
protective  duties,  or  navigation  laws  ;  but  in  something  far  greater.  .  .  . 


392  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

What  has  been  the  vast  cause  that,  so  far,  must 
have  overruled  the  multitude  of  local,  of  present,  and 
of  particular  interests  which  here  —  and  to  a  far 
greater  degree  than  at  the  stage  Schmoller  described 
—  must  have  found  their  own  natural  aims  ranged  in 
inevitable  opposition  to  the  operation  of  that  larger 
cause  subordinating  the  particular  to  the  universal 
which,  in  producing  the  prevailing  intensity  of  condi- 
tions, is  about  to  win  for  the  United  States  in  general 
such  a  commanding  place  in  the  future  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question  appears  simple  and 
obvious.  And  yet,  as  soon  as  we  see  its  ultimate 
application,  we  have  extended  our  view  indefinitely 
beyond  the  horizon  of  all  theories  of  the  State  and  of 
nationality.  The  cause  is,  we  see,  simply  the  same 
deep-lying  organic  cause  which  has  made  the  popula- 
tion of  the  United  States  a  single  people ;  which  de- 
cided at  the  beginning  that  the  original  States  should 
not  set  up  barriers  against  each  other ;  which  later, 
and  at  a  supreme  crisis  of  their  existence,  prevented 
them  from  breaking  up  into  two  separate  nationalities. 
It  is  the  cause  which  has  driven  the  same  people  to 
absorb  into  this  unity,  and  to  digest  with  a  rapidity 
and  completeness  elsewhere  unknown,  the  various 
fragments  of  the  Latin  civilisations  with  which  they 
were  originally  surrounded.  It  is  the  cause  which 
has  driven  them  to  absorb  with  equal  rapidity,  and  to 
build  up  into  a  new  social  order,  the  millions  which 
Europe  has  continued  to  pour  upon  them.  But  in  all 
this  we  must  realise  that  it  is  no  mere  expansion  of  a 
race  or  of  a  nationality  we  are  watching  here.  It  is 

In  its  innermost  kernel  it  is  nothing  but  state-making  "  (  The  Mercantile 
System,  pp.  50,  51). 


x  THE  MODERN  WORLD-CONFLICT  393 

the  conquering  march  of  principles  becoming  conscious 
—  the  principles  born  into  the  world  through  the  long 
stress  of  the  process  we  have  been  describing  through- 
out. The  cause  at  work  is  similar  in  all  respects  to 
that  which,  moving  in  the  minds  of  another  branch  of 
the  peoples  representing  the  same  principles,  has 
recently  resulted  in  the  federation  of  the  Australian 
continent  — or  which,  acting  on  others,  leads  them  to 
dream  of  still  wider  ideals  of  unity  among  English- 
speaking  peoples.  But  it  is  a  cause  which  has  no 
direct  relation  to  the  conscious  machinery  of  govern- 
ments, of  politics,  or  of  States.  It  represents  rather 
the  slow  convergence  towards  each  other  in  a  majestic 
process  of  natural  development  of  the  forces  and  fac- 
tors with  which  the  ultimate  meaning  of  our  civilisa- 
tion is  identified,  and  under  the  control  of  which  the 
world  is  destined  to  pass  in  the  future  towards  which 
we  continue  to  move. 

When  in  the  light  of  this  process  we  turn  now  and 
look  back  over  the  development  of  which  Schmoller 
described  the  first  stages,1  it  has,  we  must  observe, 
become  pregnant  with  a  larger  meaning.  A  principle 
that  we  now  perceive  to  be  inherent  in  it  has  become 
visible.  In  the  earlier  phases  of  the  progress  of  the 
economic  process  towards  intensity  and  efficiency 
through  the  extension  of  the  areas  of  economic  free- 
dom in  ever  larger  and  larger  communities,  we  saw 
the  process  of  economic  development  in  Western  his- 
tory centring  round  those  inchoate  ideals  which 
Schmoller,  for  want  of  a  better  expression,  described 
as  ideals  of  "Nationality"  or  of  "State-making."* 
So  far  as  the  basis  of  these  ideals  presented  itself 

1  Tht  Mtrcantile  Theory.  a  Cf.  ibid.,  pp.  1 6,  50,  51. 


394  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

consciously  to  the  human  mind  in  early  times,  it 
doubtless  represented  little  more  than  the  expression 
of  the  tribal  or  local  egoism  characteristic  of  a  former 
era  of  evolution.  But  the  deeper  import  of  the  pro- 
cess at  a  later  stage  has  now  become  visible.  A 
higher  consciousness  than  that  of  mere  nationality 
has  begun  to  express  itself  through  it. 

As  with  the  growth  of  knowledge  the  peoples  who 
occupy  the  foremost  place  in  our  civilisation  at  the 
present  day  come  to  realise  the  tremendous  signifi- 
cance in  the  world  of  those  principles  of  free  conflict 
of  which  they  have  become  the  representatives  in  his- 
tory ;  as  they  begin  to  realise  that  it  is  through  the 
long  stress  of  their  history  that  these  principles  have 
been  born  into  the  world ;  as  they  come  to  realise  in 
particular  that  in  the  open  stress  of  Natural  Selection 
they  have  become  the  exponents  of  the  principle  through 
which  the  main  stream  of  the  evolutionary  process  has 
come  down  through  Western  history,  and  through  which 
it  descends  towards  the  future  ;  —  then  a  sense  of  com- 
munity different  in  kind,  and  also  in  intensity  to  any 
that  has  ever  existed  before,  must  come  to  express 
itself  through  the  process  which  these  peoples  are 
carrying  forward  in  the  world.  The  development 
towards  economic  enfranchisement  which  Schmoller 
saw  pursuing  its  course  subconsciously  in  history  will, 
as  it  were,  have  attained  to  consciousness  ;  and  with 
an  immeasurably  higher  meaning  and  sterner  sanction 
behind  it  than  that  of  any  of  the  tribal  or  local  egoisms 
hitherto  expressing  themselves  under  the  ideals  of 
nationality. 

On  the  horizon  of  modern  thought  we  are,  in  short, 
in  sight  of  the  fact  that  in  the  progress  of  the  world 


X  THE  MODERN   WORLD-CONFLICT  395 

the  days  of  "  nationalities  "  in  the  old  sense  are  num- 
bered. The  evolutionary  process  in  Western  history 
is  slowly  but  surely  converging  towards  a  stage  at 
which  the  struggle  will  be  between  a  few  great  systems 
of  social  order,  of  which  the  political  and  economic 
structure  will  be,  in  the  last  resort,  the  outward  expres- 
sion of  different  interpretations  of  fundamental  ethi- 
cal conceptions.  And  the  determining  cause,  in 
respect  of  which  Natural  Selection  will  eventually  dis- 
criminate in  the  rivalry  between  them,  must  inevita- 
bly be  the  degree  of  efficiency  with  which  they  have 
embodied  in  the  world-process  that  principle  towards 
the  expression  of  which  the  whole  evolutionary  drama 
moves  —  the  subordination  of  the  present  to  the 
future. 

In  the  current  literature  of  the  time  all  kinds  of 
Utopian  dreams  are  indulged  in  as  to  the  character 
of  the  future  that  is  before  us.  We  may,  however, 
almost  at  a  glance,  put  most  of  them  aside  as  unreal 
and  impossible.  There  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  principles  with  which  the  future  of  the 
world  is  identified.  It  is  by  no  broad  pathway  through 
Elysian  fields  of  ordered  ease  that  the  peoples  to  whom 
the  future  of  the  world  belongs  are  advancing  to  the 
goal  which  is  before  them.  It  is  through  conditions 
more  strenuous  than  have  ever  prevailed  in  the  world 
before. 

The  meaning  of  the  evolutionary  drama  that  is  work- 
ing itself  out  in  Western  history  has  been  the  same 
from  the  beginning.  It  continues  to  be  the  same  as 
far  as  human  eye  can  forecast  the  future.  It  is,  so  far 
as  science  is  concerned  with  it,  the  great  drama  in 
which  the  tyranny  of  the  present  is  being  lifted,  for 


396  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  first  time  in  the  world's  history,  from  the  shoulders 
of  the  human  race.  The  principle  which  is  accom- 
plishing so  tremendous  an  achievement  is  the  projec- 
tion of  the  controlling  sense  of  human  responsibility 
outside  the  bounds  of  political  consciousness.  But 
the  principles  with  which  the  import  of  that  process 
is  necessarily  identified  in  the  present,  are  the  princi- 
ples of  such  a  free  conflict  of  forces  as  has  never 
prevailed  in  the  world  before.  The  very  standard  of 
truth,  in  the  presence  of  which  the  peoples  who  have 
won  their  way  through  it  live  and  move,  is  a  standard 
according  to  which  truth  itself  can  only  be  conceived 
as  the  net  resultant  of  forces  apparently  opposed  and 
in  themselves  conflicting.  The  conditions  resulting 
are  the  only  conditions  in  which  the  tyrannies  of  the 
present  could  be  broken.  They  are  the  only  conceiv- 
able conditions  in  which  it  is  possible  for  the  larger 
future  to  be  born.  Whatever  we  may  think  of  them, 
they  are  the  only  ruling  conditions  which  will  be 
identified  with  the  state  of  social  order  destined  to 
prevail  among  the  peoples  to  whom  the  future  of  the 
world  belongs. 

The  peoples  who  hold  the  foremost  place  in  the 
advancing  ranks  of  our  civilisation  at  the  present  day, 
are  those  who  have  won  their  way  to  right  of  place 
through  the  prolonged  stress  of  the  development  in 
which  these  principles  have  been  born  into  the  world. 
That  development  itself  has  been  the  sequel  to  the 
earlier  struggle,  in  which  the  same  peoples  won  in  the 
supreme  stress  of  military  selection  their  right  of  place 
as  the  only  type  able  to  hold  the  stage  of  the  world 
during  the  long  epoch  in  which  it  became  the  destiny 
of  the  present  to  pass  under  the  control  of  the  future. 


x  THE  MODERN   WORLD-CONFLICT  397 

The  ideal  toward  which  they  are  carrying  the  world 
is  that  of  a  fair,  open,  and  free  rivalry  of  all  the  forces 
within  the  social  consciousness  —  a  rivalry  in  which 
the  best  organisations,  the  best  methods,  the  best 
skill,  the  best  abilities,  the  best  government,  and  the 
best  standards  of  action  and  of  belief,  shall  have  the 
right  of  universal  opportunity. 

This  is  the  ideal  which  has  been  inherent  in  West- 
ern civilisation  from  the  beginning  of  our  era.  It  is 
an  ideal  which  rests  ultimately,  as  we  have  seen,  on 
one  principle,  always  in  the  background  —  the  princi- 
ple of  tolerance  held  as  an  ultimate  conviction  of  the 
religious  consciousness.  It  is  an  ideal  involving, 
therefore,  an  attitude  towards  the  world  becoming 
inflexible  and  inexorable  at  the  point  at  which  its  own 
principle  of  tolerance  is  threatened.  It  is  the  only 
ideal  under  which  the  lesser  present  can  pass  under 
the  control  of  the  greater  future.  It  is  the  ideal  which 
in  its  ultimate  form  must  reach  the  limits  of  a  State- 
less competition  of  all  the  individuals  of  every  land, 
in  which  the  competitive  potentiality  of  all  natural 
powers  shall  be  completely  enfranchised.  And  it  is 
advancing  towards  realisation  in  modern  history,  not 
through  the  powers  of  States  or  of  Governments  to 
enforce  it ;  but  in  virtue  of  the  sterner  fact  that  in 
the  stress  of  Natural  Selection  every  other  system 
of  social  order  must  in  the  end  go  clown  before  the 
strenuousness  and  efficiency  of  the  life  of  the  peoples 
who  have  won  their  way  towards  it. 


CHAPTER   XI 

TOWARDS   THE    FUTURE 

WHEN  the  evolutionist,  who  has  carried  so  far  his 
survey  of  the  process  unfolding  itself  in  Western 
history,  pauses  for  a  space  at  this  stage  and  looks 
back  over  its  meaning  in  the  past,  it  is  almost  inevi- 
table that  a  conviction  of  the  unusual  importance  of 
the  period  towards  which  the  world  is  moving  should 
settle  slowly  upon  the  mind.  However  it  may  be 
regarded,  it  is,  he  perceives,  on  the  whole  impossible 
to  conceive  the  development  we  have  been  discussing 
in  the  preceding  chapters  as  any  merely  partial  or 
secondary  phase  of  the  evolutionary  process.  The 
more  clearly  we  distinguish,  in  relation  to  the  past 
history  of  the  race,  the  outlines  of  the  fundamental 
problem  with  which  the  human  mind  is  struggling 
therein,  and  the  more  thoroughly  we  have  grasped 
the  character  of  the  essential  unity  under  all  its 
phases  of  the  movement  we  have  followed  so  far 
throughout  our  civilisation,  the  more  clearly  do  we 
also  perceive  that  in  the  development  in  progress 
under  our  eyes  in  Western  history  we  are  regarding 
the  main  sequence  of  events  along  which  the  mean- 
ing of  the  cosmic  process  in  human  history  is  de- 
scending towards  the  future. 

Transforming  as  has  been  the  many-sided  con- 
flict we  have  followed  through  the  past,  it  can,  there- 
fore, hardly  be  regarded  as  more  than  the  prelude  to 

398 


CHAP,  xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  399 

the  wider  and  more  conscious  phase  of  the  struggle 
towards  which  the  world  is  converging.  The  devel- 
opment we  have  been  considering  has  evidently  inher- 
ent in  it  an  enormous  impetus.  But  it  has  been 
hitherto  a  movement  which  can  hardly  be-said  to  have 
risen  to  consciousness  in  the  intellectual  processes  of 
our  civilisation.  It  has  involved  of  necessity  develop- 
ments, alike  in  religious  thought  and  in  political 
theory,  which  could  only  have  yielded  their  real  mean- 
ing in  the  stern  analysis  to  which  they  have  been 
subjected  in  the  actual  stress  of  the  evolutionary 
process  in  history.  If  existing  indications  are  not 
misinterpreted,  an  epoch  of  analysis  of  exceptional 
significance  is  drawing  to  a  close  in  Western  history, 
and  we  have  travelled  to  the  verge  of  a  new  era  of 
synthesis.  In  endeavouring  to  estimate  the  impetus 
behind  the  social  transformation  to  be  accomplished 
in  the  stage  towards  which  the  historical  process  is 
advancing,  it  is  desirable,  therefore,  that  we  should, 
in  the  first  place,  briefly  consider  a  position  in  thought 
in  which  we  see,  as  it  were,  the  world-process  itself 
trembling  on  the  brink  of  consciousness. 

Now  if  we  endeavour  to  detach  the  mind  from  all 
preconceived  ideas  on  the  subject,  nothing  can  well 
be  more  remarkable  than  the  spectacle  which  is  pre- 
sented, when  we  reflect  for  a  moment  on  the  position 
that  has  been  reached  in  relation  to  existing  systems 
of  Western  thought,  if  the  principles  we  have  so  far 
endeavoured  to  set  forth  be  accepted  as  correct.  If 
we  turn  at  the  outset  to  the  domain  of  pure  thought, 
and  take  first  that  great  intellectual  movement  which 
began  in  Germany  with  the  theories  of  Kant,  and 
which  has  influenced  so  deeply  and  in  so  many  direc- 


400  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

tions  the  course  of  modern  thought,  the  result  as  it 
begins  to  stand  out  before  the  mind  is  very  striking. 

So  far  as  it  is  possible  to  compress  into  a  few 
words  the  problem  which  we  see  Kant  discussing 
in  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason^  to  which  we  see 
him  later  bidding  farewell  in  the  Prolegomena  to  any 
Future  Metaphysic?  and  around  which  for  over  a  cen- 
tury so  much  controversy  has  centred,  it  might  be 
put  as  follows  :  —  Kant  asserted,  from  an  analysis  of 
the  human  mind,  that  there  was  to  be  distinguished 
in  it  a  quality  or  a  conviction  relating  to  ends  to  be 
described  as  transcendental,  and  as  such  lying  beyond 
the  limit  of  the  understanding ;  and  yet  a  quality  or 
conviction  which  was  also  to  be  described,  not  only  as 
true,  but  as  vitally  associated  with  the  whole  theory 
of  human  conduct  in  regard  to  human  interests  in  the 
world  around  us. 

If  we  take  now,  on  the  other  hand,  the  leading 
tenet  of  the  opposing  empirical  school  of  thought 
which  has  come  down  through  Hume,  and  the  influ- 
ence of  which  has  lasted  down  to  the  present  day, 
and  endeavour  to  compress  it  into  similarly  brief 
terms,  it  would  amount  practically  to  this.  So  far 
from  giving  any  countenance  to  Kant's  conception, 
it  asserted  with  emphasis  that  the  content  of  the 
human  mind  proceeded  simply  from  sensations  re- 
lated to  experience;3  or  —  to  put  the  conception 

1  The  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  by  Immanuel  Kant,  translated  by 
y.  Max  M filler,  vol.  ii. ;  see  in  particular  pp.  403-713. 

7  The  Prolegomena  to  any  Future  Metaphysic,  translated  by  J.  P. 
Mahaffy  and  J.  H.  Bernard. 

8  Cf.  A  Treatise  on  Human  Nature,  by  David  Hume,  original  edi- 
tion, edited  by  L.  A.  Selby-Bigge,  v.  i.  and  iii.  ;   and  iii. 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  401 

into  the  more  developed  form  it  reached  later  in 
Herbert  Spencer's  theories  —  it  proceeded  from  the 
past  experience  either  of  the  individual  or  of  the 
race.1  Translated  into  the  language  of  psychology, 
this  conception  of  the  empirical  school  of  thought 
became  in  our  time  an  assertion  that  all  the  faculties 
and  intuitions  of  the  human  mind  have  arisen  from 
the  consolidated  experience  of  antecedent  individuals 
who  have  bequeathed  their  nervous  organisations  to 
the  existing  individuals.2  Translated  into  a  principle 
of  ethics,  it  became  an  assertion  that  all  ethical  ideas 
represent  simply  the  inherited  experience  of  utilities.8 
Translated  into  the  fundamental  maxim  of  Marxian 
socialism,  it  became  the  assertion  that  all  human 
institutions  and  beliefs  are  ultimately  in  the  last 
analysis  the  outcome  of  economic  conditions.4 

The  conclusion,  in  short,  to  which  Kant  advanced 
has  been  regarded  by  the  adherents  of  the  empirical 
school  of  thought  as  offering  no  solid  ground  for 
assent.  For  in  the  conception,  for  instance,  which 
reaches  its  most  developed  phase  in  Herbert  Spencer's 
theories  —  that  conception  in  which  the  clue  to 
individual  and  social  development  alike  is  summed  up 
in  the  relations  of  the  ascendant  present  to  the  past 

1  Cf.  Principles  of  Biology,  §§  297-314;  Principles  of  Psychology, 
§§  223-273,  and  §  430. 

8  Cf.  Principles  of  Psychology,  §  129  to  end. 

*  Cf.  Principles  of  Ethics,  §§  24-62.  The  position  with  which  the 
English  school  set  out  may  be  compared,  in  the  first  book  of  Locke's 
hssay  concerning  the  Human  Understanding,  with  that  reached  by  Mr. 
Spencer. 

4  Cf.  Capital,  by  Karl  Marx  (trans,  by  Moon  and  Aveling),  chap.  i. 
sec.  4,  and  chap,  xxxii. ;   also   German  Social  Democracy,  by  Bertrand 
Russell,  lecture  i. 
3D 


402  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

—  Kant's  conclusion  necessarily  presented  itself  as 
being  without  any  correlative  in  the  evolution  of  the 
individual  mind,  on  the  one  hand,  or  in  the  evolution 
of  the  social  process  as  it  was  understood,  on  the 
other.  To  others,  equally  positive,  Kant's  conclu- 
sions, nevertheless,  appeared  in  some  manner  to  have 
plumbed  the  deepest  depths  of  human  consciousness. 
And  so  the  controversy,  advancing  to  no  permanent 
conclusion  through  the  Hegelian  development,  re- 
mained suspended  in  modern  thought. 

It  is  almost  startling  to  observe  now  the  effect 
which  is  produced  when  we  look  at  Kant's  concep- 
tion in  the  light  of  the  ruling  principle  of  the  evolu- 
tionary process  as  we  have  endeavoured  to  set  it  forth 
in  the  previous  chapters.  By  one  bound  the  mind 
springs,  as  it  were,  to  the  very  centre  of  Kant's  posi- 
tion. For  if,  indeed,  all  the  phenomena  of  our  West- 
ern world  are  related  to  the  ultimate  fact  that  the 
controlling  centre  of  the  evolutionary  process  therein 
is  being  projected  out  of  the  present ;  if,  indeed,  it  is 
no  longer  the  relations  of  the  human  mind  to  the  past, 
but  to  the  future  of  the  evolutionary  process  that  has 
become  of  the  first  importance  in  the  study  of  the 
development  which  the  race  is  undergoing ;  if,  in 
short,  we  are  living  in  Western  history  in  the  midst 
of  a  movement  in  which,  as  has  been  said,  there  runs 
through  the  whole  realm  of  art,  of  ethics,  of  literature, 
of  philosophy,  of  religion,  of  politics,  and  of  economics, 
the  deep  cosmic  note  of  a  struggle  in  which  the  indi- 
vidual and  society  alike  are  being  slowly  broken  to 
the  ends  of  a  social  efficiency  which  can  never  more 
be  included  within  the  limits  of  political  conscious- 
ness,— then  the  meaning  towards  which  Kant  endeav- 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  403 

cured  to  lift  his  generation  has  become  no  more  than 
the  simple  commonplace  of  a  new  era  of  knowledge. 
In  the  clear,  cold  meaning  of  a  simple  scientific  prin- 
ciple, as  in  the  light  of  a  new  dawn,  there  stand  re- 
vealed the  outlines  of  that  land  through  which  the 
human  mind  has  struggled  to  advance  in  the  dark. 
Almost  with  a  glance  the  intellectual  vision  takes  in 
the  whole  content  of  the  position  to  which  Kant, 
central  figure  as  he  must  always  remain  in  Western 
thought,  actually  essayed  to  give  us  a  plan  in  the 
gaunt  and  cumbrous  survey  of  the  Transcendental 
Philosophy.1 

As  we  look  backward  and  forward  through  the 
history  of  thought,  the  impression  received  by  the 
mind  at  the  outset  continues  to  deepen.  There  has 
never  before,  in  the  process  of  our  social  evolution, 
emerged  into  view  so  great  and  so  far-reaching  a 
master-principle.  It  matters  not  in  what  direction 
we  apply  its  meaning  ;  the  result  is  almost  equally 
illuminative.  As  we  understand  the  nature  of  the  evo- 
lutionary problem  that  is  being  solved  in  the  histori- 
cal process  in  Western  history,  the  line  of  demarcation 
which  divides  the  meaning  of  our  era  from  the  ulti- 
mate significance  of  all  other  phases  and  all  other 
epochs  of  human  development  stands  out  before  the 
mind.  When  we  perceive  the  central  meaning  of  that 

1  Many  of  what  will  he  seen  to  be  simple  and  obvious  inferences 
from  the  position  defined  in  the  foregoing  chapters  could  hardly  be 
stated  in  better  words  than  those  in  which  they  are  set  forth  by  Kant 
towards  the  end  of  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  after  they  have  been 
reached  as  conclusions  by  the  difficult  road  of  the  "  Transcendental 
Analytic  "  and  "Transcendental  Dialectic."  Compare,  for  example,  pp. 
502-508,  541-550,  and  588-602  in  Max  M tiller's  translation,  vol.  ii.  of 
The  Critique. 


404  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

era  to  be  that  it  is  the  period  in  which  the  present  is 
passing  out  under  the  control  of  the  infinite,  it  is  im- 
possible to  mistake  the  scientific  import  of  phases  of 
the  process  hitherto  veiled  in  obscurity. 

As  we  follow  the  path  which  the  human  mind  has 
taken  through  the  various  movements  in  Western 
thought  that  have  succeeded  each  other  from  the 
period  of  the  Reformation  onwards,  we  appear  to  have 
in  sight  a  phenomenon  of  striking  interest.  We  seem 
to  see,  as  it  were,  the  conscious  intellectual  process 
in  our  civilisation  slowly  overtaking  the  meaning  of 
the  evolutionary  process  which,  independent  of  that 
consciousness,  has  been  taking  its  way  through  his- 
tory in  advance  of  it.1  And,  as  in  the  first  efforts  of 
the  Greek  mind  to  interpret  the  physical  cosmos,  we 
see  how  childlike,  how  limited,  and  how  intensely  local 
have  been  many  of  the  ideas  of  the  first  stages.  With 
the  ascendency,  for  instance,  in  Western  thought  of 
the  conception  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  human 
mind  but  what  is  related  to  past  experience,  and  that 
there  is  nothing  in  the  theory  of  social  progress  but 
what  is  related  to  the  interests  of  the  individuals  com- 
prised within  the  limits  of  political  consciousness,  we 
see  how  completely,  at  first,  the  central  meaning  of 
the  evolutionary  drama  in  progress  in  our  Western 
world  has,  of  necessity,  been  missed.  For,  in  the 
midst  of  a  process  in  which  the  present  is  passing  out 
under  the  control  of  the  larger  future,  the  direction 
of  development  at  every  growing  point  of  the  human 
mind  amongst  the  winning  peoples  must  have  been 
in  the  line  along  which  the  present  is  being  gradually 

1  Cf.  The  Critical  Philosophy  of  Kant,  by  Edward  Caird,  pp.  366  et 
seq.,  vol.  ii. 


H  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  405 

drawn  into  the  meaning  of  the  future.  It  is  not  to 
the  past,  but  to  the  future  that  our  position  in  the 
present  has  become  primarily  related.  It  is  to  the 
principle  of  Projected  Efficiency  in  the  social  process 
that  every  other  principle  whatever  must  ultimately 
stand  in  subordinate  relationship. 

We  see,  therefore,  after  what  futile  issues,  whole 
movements  in  philosophy,  in  ethics,  in  religion  have 
been  directed.  We  see  in  what  a  closed  circle,  ever 
turning  inward  upon  itself,  the  leaders  have  travelled 
in  quests  vain  from  the  beginning.  That  great  move- 
ment in  Western  thought  which  began  with  the  Eng- 
lish Deists,  which  was  developed  on  the  continent  of 
Europe  in  the  eighteenth  century  under  various  forms 
of  Rationalism,  and  which,  in  its  return  influence  on 
English  thought,  culminated  in  England  in  the  utili- 
tarian theories  of  ethics  and  of  the  State,  stands  re- 
vealed to  us  in  the  new  light  shrunken  of  the  meaning 
its  leaders  dreamed  of.  Almost  with  a  single  glance 
the  mind  takes  in  its  limited  relationship  to  the  reality 
it  endeavoured  to  interpret.  To  conceive,  as  that 
school  of  thought  has  done  under  one  of  its  aspects, 
that  the  direction  of  progress  in  our  Western  world 
was  to  empty  the  concepts  of  the  system  of  religious 
belief  associated  with  our  civilisation  of  that  distinc- 
tive quality  which  projected  their  meaning  beyond 
the  limits  of  political  consciousness;1  to  imagine, 
therefore,  that  conduct  in  the  last  resort  required  no 
principle  of  support  in  the  evolutionary  process,  but 
that  of  self-interest  well  understood;2  or  as  Hume, 

1  Cf.  German  Culture  and  Christianity,  their  Controversy  1770- 
1880,  by  Joseph  Gostwick,  pp.  18-59. 

8  Cf.  Principle!  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  by  Jeremy  Bentham,  c. 


406  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

anticipating  Bentham,  put  it,  that  morality  demanded, 
not  self-denial,  but  "just  calculation  " ; l  to  dream  there- 
fore, as  the  Utilitarians  dreamed  at  last  in  England, 
that  the  scheme  of  progress  unfolded  by  them  revealed 
the  fact  that  the  influence  of  an  enlightened  self-interest, 
first  of  all  upon  the  actions,  and  afterwards  upon  the 
character  of  mankind,  is  shown  to  be  sufficient  to  con- 
struct the  whole  edifice  of  civilisation  ;2  —  is  to  pre- 
sent to  us  now  but  the  progressive  stages  of  an  illusion. 
The  nature  of  the  deep  dividing  line  which  separates 
the  principles  of  morals  (covering  conduct  related  to 
ends  in  the  evolutionary  process  necessarily  projected 
beyond  the  limits  of  political  consciousness)  from  the 
principles  of  the  State  (concerned  with  interests  within 
the  limits  of  political  consciousness)  has,  we  see,  re- 
mained entirely  outside  the  vision  of  the  Utilitarians.3 

i.-iv. ;  Utilitarianism,  by  J.  S.  Mill,  c.  ii. ;  Data  of  Ethics,  by  Herbert 
Spencer,  §§  92-98 ;  and  The  English  Utilitarians,  by  Leslie  Stephen, 
vol.  i.  c.  vi.  vol.  ii.  p.  313,  to  end. 

1  Inquiry  concerning  the  Principles  of  Morals,  by  David  Hume. 

2  Rationalism  in  Europe,  by  W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  vol.  ii.  p.  368 ;   cf. 
Utilitarianism,  by  J.  S.  Mill,  pp.  24,  25.     Mill  speaks  vaguely  of  his 
principle  of  utility  applying  to  the  "  collective  interests  of  mankind  "  ; 
but  he  does  not  in  practice  carry  us  any  farther  than  Bentham,  who 
speaks  of  it  as  applying  either  to  the  interest  of  the  individual  or  the 
interest  of  the  community,  and  proceeds  forthwith  to  define  the  interest 
of  the  community  as  simply  "  the  sum  of  the  interests  of  the  several 
members  who  compose  it."    Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  p.  3. 

8  Mr.  J.  S.  Mackenzie  rightly  points  out  that  "  the  chief  claims  of 
utilitarianism  to  practical  value  seem  to  rest  on  (a)  the  principle  of 
'  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number '  in  legislation,  and 
(£)  the  principle  of '  Utilities '  in  Economics,"  An  Introduction  to  Social 
Philosophy,  chap.  iv.  Within  these  limits,  and  apart  from  its  more  am- 
bitious theories,  Utilitarianism  has,  of  course,  been  an  important  factor 
in  that  distinctively  English  development  already  noticed  as  charac- 
terised by  a  tendency  to  the  complete  differentiation  of  the  theory  of 
the  State  from  the  science  of  ethics. 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  407 

In  the  growing  light  we  perceive  of  what  incom- 
plete conceptions  of  the  principles  underlying  the 
evolutionary  process  many  of  the  positions  taken  up 
have  been  the  expression.  The  assertion,  repeated 
in  many  keys  in  movements  of  the  time,  that  the  eco- 
nomic factor — that  is  the  self-interest  of  the  indi- 
viduals within  the  limits  of  political  consciousness  — 
is  the  ruling  factor  in  human  history,  has  become  no 
more  than  an  empty  formula  from  which  the  meaning 
has  vanished  in  the  presence  of  the  reality  that  we 
perceive  to  lie  beyond  it.  The  conception  which  Paul 
Bert  wished  to  see  the  ruling  principle  in  the  devel- 
opment of  modern  France,  namely,  that  our  natural 
instincts  —  meaning  thereby  the  instincts  that  are 
related  to  the  past  history  of  the  race  —  are  the  real 
basis  of  conduct  and  morality,  has  become  scarcely 
more  than  a  formula  of  atavism.  The  correlative 
maxim  in  art  — that  the  end  of  art  is  for  its  own  sake, 
that  is,  for  the  sake  of  sensations  related  to  the  past  ex- 
perience of  the  race  instead  of  for  the  sake  of  the  mean- 
ing of  the  infinite  process  into  which  we  are  being  drawn 
in  the  future  —  has  become  in  turn  merely  a  belated 
survival  into  the  modern  era.  The  meaning  which  the 
later  Tolstoy,  like  the  earlier  Kant,  has  endeavoured  to 
portray  here  also  shines  before  us  as  a  simple  com- 
monplace in  the  light. 

And  so  the  illumination  continues.  We  see  how 
empty  of  real  meaning  has  been  Herbert  Spencer's 
attempt  to  explain  the  vast  process  in  Western  his- 
tory that  has  resulted  in  the  gradual  differentiation 
of  aim  between  the  Church  and  the  State,  as  if  it 
represented  hardly  more  than  the  survival  into  our 
time  of  that  phase  of  the  relations  of  the  present  to 


408  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  past  which  he  portrayed  in  his  original  theory  of 
Ancestor  Worship.1  We  are,  in  truth,  no  longer 
primarily  concerned  in  discussing  the  phenomena  of 
the  system  of  religious  belief  associated  with  our  civili- 
sation, in  relation  to  a  fact  upon  which  a  huge  fabric 
of  trivial  theory  has  been  constructed  by  writers  who 
have  followed  Mr.  Spencer's  lead  in  this  matter ; 
namely,  the  fact  that  there  is  to  be  distinguished  in 
the  concepts  of  that  system  of  belief  ideas  which  may 
be  held  to  represent  survivals  from  a  past  stage  in  the 
development  of  the  race.2  It  is  the  relation  in  which 
these  ideas  stand  to  the  future,  and  not  to  the  past, 
which  has  become  of  overshadowing  importance  in  the 
study  of  the  evolutionary  process.  It  is  with  their 
significance  as  anticipations,  and  not  as  survivals,  that 
we  have  become  concerned.  They  represent,  we  see 
now,  but  the  first  points  of  attachment,  along  the 
line  of  which  human  consciousness  has  begun  to  be 
drawn  into  the  ever-increasing  sweep  of  an  integrat- 
ing process,  of  which  the  controlling  meaning  is  not 
in  the  past  but  in  the  future. 

The  central  idea,  in  short,  around  which  Mr.  Spen- 
cer constructed  his  theory  of  human  development  in 
the  Synthetic  Philosophy,  namely,  that  the  meaning  of 
the  evolutionary  process  in  history  lies  in  the  progress 
of  the  struggle  between  the  present  and  the  past,  has 

1  To  Herbert  Spencer  the  increasing  difference  of  aim  between  the 
Church  and  the  State  in  our  civilisation  is  practically  only  a  form  of  the 
question  whether  the  living  ruler,  with  his  organisation  of  civil  and 
military  subordinates  (as  represented  in  the  State),  shall  or  shall  not 
yield  to  the  organisation  (as  represented  in  the  religious  consciousness) 
of  those  who  represent  dead  rulers  and  profess  to  utter  their  commands; 
cf.  Ecclesiastical  Institutions,  §§  638—641. 

2  Cf.  The  Evolution  of  the  Idea  of  God,  by  Grant  Allen. 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  409 

been  relegated  to  a  place  in  the  background.  The 
central  principle  of  the  evolutionary  drama  in  progress 
in  the  world,  namely,  that  it  is  the  meaning  of  the 
struggle  between  the  future  and  the  present  which 
controls  all  the  ultimate  tendencies  of  progress,  and 
into  which  all  the  phenomena  of  history  are  being 
gradually  drawn,  has  remained,  we  see,  outside  the 
field  of  Mr.  Spencer's  vision. 

There  is  no  exaggeration  in  any  of  these  respects 
of  the  transformation  in  knowledge  which  we  see 
accomplished  under  our  eyes.  There  can  be  no  mis- 
take as  to  the  impetus  it  must  give  to  a  far-reaching 
process  of  change.  On  whatever  side  we  extend  our 
vision  the  effect  of  the  illumination  continues  to  be 
distinguished.  As  the  mind  travels  slowly  over  the 
outlines  of  the  developmental  process  in  Western  his- 
tory we  have  endeavoured  to  describe,  the  containing 
significance  is  unmistakable.  The  existence  of  the 
necessity  in  the  evolutionary  process  which  must 
sooner  or  later  subordinate  the  present  and  all  its 
interests  to  the  interests  of  a  future  which  is  infinite ; 
the  nature  of  the  supreme  concepts  associated  with 
the  era  in  which  we  are  living,  by  which  the  human 
mind  has  risen  to  a  sense  of  personal  responsibility  to 
a  principle  of  sacrifice  cosmic  in  its  significance  ;  the 
character  of  the  resulting,  slowly  developing  move- 
ment in  our  civilisation,  the  potentiality  of  which, 
entirely  different  from  any  represented  in  the  ancient 
world,  has  in  consequence  been  from  the  beginning 
to  project  the  controlling  centre  of  the  evolutionary 
process  beyond  the  contents  of  principles  operating 
merely  within  the  limits  of  political  consciousness  ; 
the  resulting  gradual  dissociation  in  Western  history 


4IO  WESTERN   CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

of  the  religious  consciousness  from  all  alliance  with 
the  powers  and  purposes  of  the  State,  in  that  pro- 
longed struggle  in  which  the  human  mind  has  risen  to 
the  conception  of  truth  expressing  itself  as  the  result- 
ant of  forces  apparently  in  themselves  conflicting ; 
the  consequent  slow  disintegration,  still  in  progress, 
of  all  the  absolutisms  in  opinion,  in  government,  in 
ethics,  in  religion,  by  which  the  present,  operating 
principally  through  the  powers  of  the  State,  or  through 
the  compulsion  of  accepted  standards  of  truth  regarded 
as  absolute,  had  hitherto  strangled  the  future ;  the 
gradual  opening,  therefore,  in  the  present  of  the  con- 
ditions of  such  a  free  and  tolerant  conflict  of  forces  as 
has  never  been  in  the  world  before,  but  a  free  conflict 
of  which  the  very  existence,  nevertheless,  depends  at 
every  point  on  the  all-pervading  influence  in  our  civili- 
sation of  the  concepts  that  continue  to  maintain  the 
controlling  meaning  of  the  evolutionary  process  disso- 
ciated from  all  the  interests  and  compulsions  of  the 
present,  and  in  its  condition  of  projection  beyond  the 
limits  of  political  consciousness;  —  all  form  the  links 
in  a  process  of  related  sequences  which  profoundly 
and  permanently  impresses  the  intellect.  We  appear, 
in  short,  in  Western  history  to  have  reached  the  stage 
when  the  intellectual  process  is  about  to  overtake  the 
meaning  of  the  evolutionary  process  which  has  pur- 
sued a  course  hitherto  in  advance  of  it  ;  a  stage  at 
which  all  the  stress  and  strenuousness  of  the  modern 
world-conflict,  instead  of  being  considered  as  some- 
thing external  to  that  system  of  belief  which  is  asso- 
ciated with  our  civilisation,  will  be  regarded  by  science 
as  a  natural  phenomenon  inherent  in  it  from  the  begin- 
ning, and  coming  at  last  actually  and  visibly  within 
the  sphere  of  its  highest  meaning. 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  411 

The  historical  process  in  our  civilisation  has  reached 
the  brink  of  consciousness.  This  is  the  pregnant  fact 
which  it  is  necessary  to  take  into  consideration  in 
endeavouring  to  estimate  the  character  of  the  impetus 
likely  to  be  behind  it  in  the  stage  in  which  it  moves 
towards  tke  great  struggle  of  the  modern  era ;  the 
struggle  inherent  in,  and  proceeding  from  the  develop- 
ment described  in  the  preceding  chapters;  namely, 
that  in  which  there  is  ultimately  involved  the  chal- 
lenge of  the  ascendency  of  the  present  in  the  economic 
process  throughout  the  world.  That  the  result  is 
destined  to  be  enlarging  and  reconstructive  beyond 
that  proceeding  from  any  previous  period  of  transition 
in  our  history,  no  mind  which  has  grasped  the  princi- 
ples of  the  situation  can  ultimately  doubt. 

Now,  standing  at  the  present  time  in  the  midst  of 
what  may  be  called  the  first  stage  of  the  competitive 
era  in  Western  history,  it  is  necessary,  in  endeavour- 
ing to  understand  the  future  tendencies  of  our  civili- 
sation, to  first  of  all  recall  before  the  mind  a  fact  of 
the  evolutionary  process  which,  although  it  has  been 
involved  from  the  beginning  in  the  principle  of  Pro- 
jected Efficiency,  brings  to  the  mind  even  at  this 
stage  a  certain  feeling  of  surprise,  when  it  is  clearly 
and  succinctly  stated.  It  may  be  observed  that  in 
considering  the  recent  past  of  the  evolutionary  pro- 
cess in  the  modern  world,  the  outward  feature  with 
which  we  have  been  principally  occupied  has  been 
capable  of  being  summed  up  in  the  single  word  - 
emancipation.  The  period  has  been  one  of  the  gen- 
eral enfranchisement  of  all  the  conditions  and  forms 
of  human  activity.  It  has  been  the  era  of  the  eman- 
cipation of  creeds  and  of  commerce,  of  industry  and 


412  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

of  thought,  of  individuals,  of  classes,  and  of  nationali- 
ties. In  the  literature  of  the  forward  movement  in 
the  modern  world  we  follow  the  tendencies  of  prog- 
ress in  a  period  of  history  through  which  the  glorifi- 
cation of  this  principle  of  freedom  resounds  ever  in 
our  ears  as  a  sustained  and  world-intoxicating  paean. 
We  can,  however,  never  clearly  understand  the  na- 
ture of  the  relationship  of  the  present  to  the  future 
in  our  civilisation,  until  we  have  grasped  the  central 
fact  from  which  the  whole  significance  of  this  Western 
movement  towards  liberty  in  the  last  resort  proceeds. 
It  may  be  briefly  put  into  the  statement  that :  — 

The  setting  free  in  the  modern  world  of  the  activi- 
ties of  the  individual  as  against  all  the  absolutisms 
which  would  have  otherwise  enthralled  them  is,  in  its 
ultimate  meaning,  only  a  process  of  progress  towards 
a  more  advanced  and  complete  stage  of  social  subor- 
dination than  has  ever  prevailed  in  the  world  before. 

It  is,  in  short,  only  because  there  is  involved  in  the 
freedom  of  the  individual  the  development  of  those 
standards  and  forces  by  which  the  present  is  being 
subordinated  to  the  future,  that  the  movement  to- 
wards liberty  associated  with  our  time  attains  to  the 
importance  it  assumes  in  the  modern  science  of  society. 
It  is  not,  therefore,  with  the  interests  of  the  individ- 
ual therein,  nor  even  with  those  of  classes,  of  races, 
or  of  nationalities  that  we  are  primarily  concerned. 
It  is  the  meaning  of  the  social  process  which  is  every- 
where in  the  ascendant.  It  is  to  this  dominant  fact 
that  all  the  tendencies  of  the  prolonged  development 
described  in  the  previous  chapters  are  ultimately 
related.  All  the  steps  towards  a  free  conflict  of 
forces  —  towards  equality  of  conditions,  of  rights, 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  413 

and  of  opportunities,  and  towards  the  liberty  and 
freedom  of  the  individual  under  all  forms,  —  are  sim- 
ply but  stages  of  progress  in  an  increasing  process  of 
social  subordination.  It  is  upon  none  of  these  things 
regarded  by  themselves  that  we  must  fix  attention  in 
considering  the  future.  It  is  upon  the  meaning  of 
the  evolutionary  process  as  a  whole  that  the  mind 
must  continue  to  be  concentrated. 

If  we  look  back  over  the  first  period  of  the  competi- 
tive era  in  Western  history,  particularly  in  England 
and  the  United  States,  where  its  phases  have  reached 
the  most  advanced  development,  we  have  in  sight  a 
spectacle  of  extreme  interest.  We  have  before  us  in 
this  period  the  phenomena  of  an  epoch  in  which  the 
advocates  of  the  principle  of  an  uncontrolled  play  of 
forces  in  the  State  have  first  risen  to  the  position  of 
clearly  perceiving  the  enormous  importance  in  the 
modern  world-process  of  the  principle  of  free  compe- 
tition. Nevertheless,  what  we  see  is  that  here,  just 
as  in  the  earlier  phases  of  the  evolutionary  process 
in  Western  history  in  which  the  ascendency  of  the 
present  was  first  challenged,  the  insight  of  the  leaders 
of  the  time  has  carried  them  up  to  a  fixed  point,  and 
no  further.  The  advocates  of  an  uncontrolled  play 
of  forces  in  society  are,  we  see,  everywhere,  as  yet, 
regarding  as  the  dominant  principle  of  the  social 
process,  nothing  more  than  a  condition  of  competi- 
tion in  which  the  action  of  every  individual  is  sup- 
posed to  proceed  from  the  standpoint  of  his  own 
enlightened  self-interest  within  the  limits  of  political 
consciousness.  In  all  the  early  literature  of  the  com- 
petitive movement  in  England  and  the  United  States 
it  is  the  glorification  of  the  principle  of  free  competi- 


414  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

tion  within  these  limits  which  is  always  in  evidence. 
The  absolute  potency  of  the  uncontrolled  action  of 
the  competitive  forces  in  such  circumstances  to  carry 
forward  the  whole  social  process  is  taken  for  granted. 
And  the  inherent  tendency  of  all  economic  evils  to 
cure  themselves  if  simply  left  alone  —  the  character- 
istic doctrine  of  the  Manchester  school  of  thought  in 
England  —  becomes,  accordingly,  the  central  and 
fundamental  article  of  belief  throughout  all  that 
rigid  system  of  social  theory,  in  the  influence  of 
which  almost  the  entire  intellectual  life  of  England 
and  the  United  States  begins  to  be  held  by  the  last 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

When  we  look  closely  at  the  position  which  is  here 
defined,  the  fundamental  principle  it  discloses  on  analy- 
sis is  very  remarkable.  Despite  the  greatly  widened 
area  of  the  process  of  freedom  won  for  the  world,  as 
the  doctrine  of  competition  in  this  form  carries  the 
peoples  involved  in  it  a  long  step  forward  in  the 
direction  in  which  the  development  described  by 
Schmoller  is  proceeding ;  despite  even  the  gigantic 
results  which  immediately  follow  the  increasing  inten- 
sity of  conditions  ;  the  fact  is  indubitable  that  —  just 
as  in  the  first  stages  of  all  the  other  developments 
towards  the  emancipation  of  the  future  which  have 
taken  place  in  our  civilisation — economic  development 
as  a  whole  remains  still  imprisoned  within  certain  in- 
exorable limits.  It  still  moves  in  all  its  details  within 
the  closed  circle  of  the  ascendant  present.  It  is  only 
the  immensity  of  the  stage  upon  which  the  process  is 
being  enacted  which  obscures  for  a  time  the  nature 
of  the  goal  towards  which  the  whole  movement  slowly 
advances.  In  endeavouring  to  understand  the  modern 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  415 

world-problem,  it  is,  therefore,  of  the  highest  impor- 
tance that  the  intellect  should  endeavour  to  hold 
firmly  from  the  outset  the  character  of  certain  prin- 
ciples which  ultimately  govern  it. 

Now  it  has  been  pointed  out  by  an  American 
writer,  Professor  H.  C.  Adams,  that  in  the  conditions 
of  an  unregulated  competition  for  commercial  suprem- 
acy there  is  a  result  always  inherent  in  the  resulting 
struggle  which  must  sooner  or  later  become  visible. 
It  is  impossible,  this  writer  points  out,  for  the  condi- 
tions of  such  a  struggle  to  rise  beyond  a  certain  fixed 
level.  They  must  always  in  the  end  adjust  them- 
selves to  the  level,  not  of  the  qualities  that  we  may 
consider  desirable  from  the  social  or  from  any  other 
point  of  view,  but  of  those  which  contribute  most 
directly  to  one  end — fitness  to  survive  in  the  state 
of  unregulated  competition  which  prevails.  The 
struggle  must,  as  it  were,  always  tend  to  reduce  itself 
in  the  end  to  the  level  of  this  its  permanent  govern- 
ing denominator. 

For  example,  to  quote  Professor  Adams'  words, 
"Suppose  ten  manufacturers  competing  with  each 
other  to  supply  the  market  with  cottons.  Assume 
that  nine  of  them,  recognising  the  rights  of  childhood, 
would  gladly  exclude  from  their  employ  all  but  adult 
labour.  But  the  tenth  man  has  no  moral  sense.  His 
business  is  conducted  solely  with  a  view  to  large 
sales  and  a  broad  market.  As  child  labour  is  actually 
cheaper  than  adult  labour,  he  gives  it  a  decided  pref- 
erence. What  is  the  result  ?  Since  his  goods  come 
into  competition  with  the  goods  of  the  other  manufac- 
turers, and  since  \vc  who  buy  goods  only  ask  respect- 
ing quality  and  price,  the  nine  men,  whose  moral 


41 6  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

instincts  we  commend,  will  be  obliged,  if  they  would 
maintain  themselves  in  business,  to  adopt  the  methods 
of  the  tenth  man,  whose  immoral  character  we  con- 
demn. Thus  the  moral  tone  of  business  is  brought 
down  to  the  level  of  the  worst  man  who  can  sustain 
himself  in  it."  * 

When  we  examine  the  fact  which  is  here  briefly 
stated  in  the  light  of  the  principle  discussed  in  a  pre- 
vious chapter,  the  remarkable  feature  already  referred 
to  becomes  visible.  What  we  see  is  that  in  such  a 
state  of  unregulated  competition  the  ultimate  govern- 
ing principle  by  which  the  struggle  must  be  regulated 
is  of  necessity  that  of  a  past  era  of  the  evolutionary 
drama.  We  are  simply  in  the  presence  of  the  princi- 
ple of  the  ascendency  of  the  present  represented  in 
all  its  strength  in  the  social  process.  It  is  the  ability 
to  survive  in  a  free  and  irresponsible  struggle  for  gain, 
all  the  meaning  of  which  is  in  the  present,  that  is 
here  the  sole  determining  factor  of  development. 
Only  the  largeness  of  the  stage  upon  which  the  eco- 
nomic process  is  being  enacted  prevents  us  for  a  time 
from  perceiving  that  in  such  a  phase  of  the  competi- 
tive era  there  is  really  no  principle  at  work  which 
differentiates  us  from  that  phase  of  the  evolutionary 
process  beyond  which  it  is  the  inherent  and  charac- 
teristic meaning  of  our  civilisation  to  carry  the  world. 
There  is  absolutely  no  cause  present  which  can  pre- 
vent that  condition  from  ultimately  arising  which  has 
been  the  peculiar  and  distinctive  feature  of  all  the 

i-An  Interpretation  of  the  Social  Movements  of  Our  Time.  To  per- 
ceive the  full  reach  of  Mr.  Adams'  principle,  compare  this  statement 
of  it  with  Ricardo's  well-known  law  of  rent  as  set  forth  in  his  Prin- 
ciples of  Political  Economy,  c.  ii. 


n  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  417 

barbarisms  of  the  past ;  namely,  that  condition  at 
which  the  strongest  competitive  forces  in  a  free-fight 
in  the  present  tend  to  become  absolute,  and  to  extin- 
guish altogether  the  circumstances  of  free  competition. 
It  can  be  only  a  matter  of  time,  as  the  process  grad- 
ually develops  itself,  and  as  it  eliminates  from  the 
struggle  all  elements  but  those  contributing  to  success 
therein,  for  the  world  to  see  that  the  distinctive  prin- 
ciple for  which  our  civilisation  stands  —  that  principle 
the  characteristic  effect  of  which  is  to  secure  the  con- 
ditions of  really  free  competition  by  emancipating  the 
evolutionary  process  from  the  tyrannies  through  which 
the  present  tends  to  strangle  the  future  —  is  as  yet 
entirely  unrepresented  and  unexpressed  in  this  first 
conception  of  the  principles  of  free  competition. 

If  we  look,  accordingly,  at  the  history  of  the  move- 
ment proceeding  from  the  Manchester  school  of 
thought  in  England  —  that  movement  with  which 
the  first  intoxication  of  the  perception  of  the  impor- 
tance of  the  principle  of  free  competition  in  our  civili- 
sation must  always  remain  identified  —  the  fate  which 
we  see  to  be  overtaking  it  in  our  time  is  presented  in 
an  aspect  so  striking,  that  the  interest  of  the  situation 
falls  little  short  of  the  dramatic. 

A  quarter  of  a  century  after  Adam  Smith  had 
published  the  Wealth  of  Nations  in  England,  we  see 
Ricardo  already  beginning  to  assume  the  absolute 
potency  of  the  uncontrolled  competitive  forces  to  regu- 
late the  entire  social  process.  This  was  the  time 
when,  under  the  conditions  of  uncontrolled  competi- 
tion, women  and  young  children  were  being  employed 
for  twelve  and  fifteen  hours  a  day  in  the  factories  of 
Great  Britain  in  circumstances  so  terrible,  and  with 


41 8  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

results  so  appalling,  that  the  memory  of  them  still 
haunts  like  a  nightmare  the  literature  of  the  modern 
industrial  revolution  in  England.  It  was  the  time 
when  it  was  said  that  half  the  infants  of  Manchester 
died  before  reaching  the  age  of  three  years,  and  in 
which,  in  certain  factory  districts,  the  surviving  youth- 
ful population  was  said  to  be  in  large  part  physically 
worn  out  before  reaching  adult  age. 

The  first  timorous  attempt  of  the  State  to  regulate 
such  conditions  of  uncontrolled  competition  was  made 
in  England  in  the  year  1802.  In  this  it  ventured  as 
yet  to  interfere  only  on  behalf  of  apprenticed  pauper 
children ;  attempting  to  make  no  limit  as  to  the  age 
below  which  young  children  should  not  be  employed, 
and  limiting  only  the  working  hours  of  pauper  chil- 
dren to  twelve  daily.  It  was  not  till  nearly  two 
decades  later  that  the  State  attempted  to  interfere 
in  England  on  behalf  of  young  children  generally, 
prohibiting  the  employment  of  those  under  nine  years 
of  age,  and  fixing  a  twelve  hours'  day  for  all  young 
persons  under  the  age  of  sixteen.  In  the  fourth  dec- 
ade of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  the  Utilitarians 
had  come  to  assert  with  almost  the  emphasis  of  a  reli- 
gious dogma,  the  tendency  of  economic  evils  to  cure 
themselves  without  the  interference  of  the  State,  the 
Manchester  capitalists  were  still  vigorously  and  suc- 
cessfully challenging  the  principle  of  State  interfer- 
ence with  the  conditions  of  the  employment  of  "  free  " 
adult  labour ;  and  it  is  only  from  this  period  forward 
that  there  begins  in  England  that  long  list  of  measures 
—  the  bearing  of  which  in  the  development  of  modern 
society  is  even  as  yet  not  always  fully  perceived  —  in 
which  the  State,  in  response  to  the  growing  conscious- 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  419 

ness  of  the  time,  has  interfered  to  an  increasing  degree 
in  the  relations  between  capital  and  labour. 

The  intellectual  phenomena  which  developed  side 
by  side  with  these  results  in  England  were  still  more 
noteworthy.  .  Slowly  in  English  thought  during  the 
nineteenth  century  there  came  into  view  the  economic 
theory,  accepted  as  orthodox  for  the  time  being,  of 
this  "  free  "  labour.  According  to  the  received  opin- 
ion, the  labouring  classes  were  considered  as  con- 
demned by  natural  law  to  live  and  breed  under  the 
control  of  capital  on  that  minimum  reward  which  — 
to  quote  Ricardo's  definition  of  the  natural  price  of 
labour  —  was  "necessary  to  enable  the  labourers,  one 
with  another,  to  subsist,  and  to  perpetuate  their  race 
without  either  decrease  or  diminution."  J  The  re- 
markable conception  which  accompanied  this  theory, 
and  which  runs  through  the  whole  of  J.  S.  Mill's 
Political  Economy,  delivered  the  labourer  helplessly 
and  permanently  bound,  as  it  were,  into  the  hands  of 
the  capitalist  class,  making  all  efforts  to  free  himself 
appear  hopeless.  This  conception  was  presented  in 
the  now  practically  exploded  theory  of  a  wages'  fund 
—  implicitly  accepted,  strange  as  it  may  appear,  by 
the  dominant  school  of  English  economists  through 
all  the  period  frord  1820  to  i87O2  —  according  to  which 
the  amount  of  the  wages'  fund  being  considered  as 
fixed  by  the  prevailing  conditions  of  capital,  "  any 

1  The  Principles  of  Political  Economy  and  Taxation,  by  David 
Ricardo  (1821),  p.  86. 

'2  In  an  interesting  review  of  the  history  of  the  theory  of  a  "Wages' 
Fund,"  Mr.  Spooner  brings  out  (Diet,  of  Pol.  Efon.  vol.  iii.  p.  638)  a 
fact  not  always  recognised,  namely,  that  J.  S.  Mill  before  his  death 
acknowledged  (  f-'ortnightly  Keview,  May,  1869)  himself  in  error  in  the 
position  he  had  previously  taken  up  in  this  matter. 


420  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

attempts  which  the  working  class  might  make  to  gain 
better  terms  from  their  employers  by  means  of  trade 
unions  or  otherwise,  were  either  foredoomed  to  fail- 
ure, or,  if  successful,  did  but  benefit  one  particular 
class  or  section  of  the  labouring  classes  at  the  expense 
of  all  the  rest."1  Finally,  this  conception  had  its 
corollary  in  that  notorious  theory  of  population  pro- 
pounded by  Malthus  —  socially  suicidal,  and  biologi- 
cally foolish  as  we  now  perceive  it  to  be  —  which  led 
J.  S.  Mill  to  actually  propose  to  the  labourers  as  the 
main  remedy  for  low  wages,  that  they  should,  restrain 
their  numbers,  and  endeavour  to  look  upon  every  one 
of  their  class,  "  who  had  more  than  the  number  of 
children  which  the  circumstances  of  society  allowed 
to  each,  as  doing  him  a  wrong,  as  filling  up  the  place 
which  he  was  entitled  to  share."  2 

It  seems  hard  to  believe  that  only  a  short  interval 
of  time  separates  us  from  the  period  when  these  ideas 
were  actually  authoritatively  taught  by  leaders  of  opin- 
ion in  England.  Nay  more,  that  in  this  recent  period 
such  ideas  were  implicitly  associated  in  the  minds  of 
statesmen,  philosophers,  and  philanthropists  with  the 
import  and  significance  of  the  principle  of  free  competi- 
tion in  our  civilisation.  We  see  now  in  the  clearest 
light  that  they  in  reality  represent'  nothing  more  or 
less  than  the  projection  into  modern  economic  condi- 
tions of  the  central  principle  of  the  barbarisms  of  a 
past  epoch  of  the  world's  history.  The  distinctive 
principle  for  which  our  civilisation  stands  in  the  evo- 
lutionary process  is  entirely  unrepresented  therein. 
There  could  be  no  real  free  play  of  the  competitive 

1  Diet,  of  Pol.  Economy,  vol.  iii.  p.  636  (Spooner). 

2  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  by  John  Stuart  Mill,  ii.,  xiii. 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  421 

forces  in  such  conditions.  Under  the  conception 
that  all  economic  evils  tend  to  cure  themselves  in  a 
state  of  uncontrolled  competition,  the  struggle  must, 
in  the  terms  of  Professor  Adams'  example,  sooner  or 
later  fall  to  the  level  of  its  governing  denominator. 
The  strongest  competitive  forces  must  in  time  elimi- 
nate all  elements  from  the  struggle  but  those  contrib- 
uting to  success  therein.  In  its  relations  to  its  own 
competitors  capital  must,  by  a  principle  inherent  in 
the  conditions  from  the  beginning,  tend  by  its  very 
success  to  ultimately  embody  some  colossal  attitude 
of  absolutism  towards  society.  In  the  relations  be- 
tween capital  and  labour,  where  in  the  struggle  to 
secure  the  conditions  of  profit  capital  is  able  to  enforce 
against  labour  the  right  to  withhold  the  conditions 
of  existence,  free  competition  cannot  exist.  The 
struggle  must  ultimately  be  regulated  at  the  level  of 
its  governing  denominator.  Even  if  labour  is  com- 
paratively successful  in  the  struggle  through  its  col- 
lective expression  in  trades  unionism,  it  must  tend, 
in  self-defence,  to  embody  a  latent  principle  of  passive 
resistance  to  the  conditions  of  its  highest  energy 
and  productivity  as  tending  to  diminish  employment. 
The  ultimate  conditions  of  free  competition  do  not  in 
reality  exist.  They  have  never  existed.  On  neither 
one  side  nor  the  other  is  the  distinctive  meaning  of 
the  social  process  in  our  civilisation  as  yet  represented. 
As  we  look  forward,  therefore,  to  the  future,  the 
meaning  of  the  process  of  transition,  of  which  we  are 
living  in  but  the  opening  phases,  begins  to  grow  upon 
the  imagination.  For  we  see  that  the  development 
now  in  progress  in  the  world  is  but  the  beginning  of 
a  general  movement,  in  which  this  early  conception 


422  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

of  the  principles  of  free  competition  is  destined  in 
turn  to  be  slowly  broken  to  the  overruling  meaning 
of  the  social  process  as  a  whole  ;  —  but  broken  only  in 
a  struggle  which,  gradually  extending  outwards  from 
the  relations  of  labour  to  capital,  into  the  domain  of 
industry,  of  business,  of  commerce,  and  of  interna- 
tional relations,  must  in  time  consciously  involve  in 
its  reach  all  the  tendencies  of  the  world-conflict  in 
Western  history. 

The  entire  movement  represented  by  modern 
socialism  is,  in  this  respect,  to  be  regarded  as  bear- 
ing a  close  analogy  to  that  Renaissance  of  the  middle 
ages  which  preceded  the  upheaval  out  of  which  was  to 
arise  a  new  governing  principle  of  the  evolutionary 
process.  All  its  faults  and  failings  notwithstanding  ; 
far  as  its  leaders  have  sometimes  wandered  from  the 
meaning  of  our  era ;  completely  as  many  of  those 
leaders  have  missed,  as  did  the  leaders  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance,  the  essential  meaning  of  the  great  anti- 
nomy represented  in  the  evolution  of  our  Western 
world  ;  the  movement,  nevertheless,  represents  in  a 
true  sense  a  general  revolt  of  the  consciousness  of  our 
time  against  economic  conditions  tending  towards 
absolutism  in  which  the  characteristic  principle  that 
our  civilisation  represents  in  the  evolutionary  process 
is  as  yet  inoperative.  In  it  there  is  expressed  in 
effect  the  first  general  effort  of  the  masses  of  the 
world  to  impose  on  the  economic  conditions  repre- 
sented by  the  early  crude  conceptions  of  the  competi- 
tive era  that  distinctive  meaning  which  the  social 
process  as  a  whole  is  destined,  sooner  or  later,  to 
acquire  in  our  civilisation. 

As  we  look,  therefore,  at  the  fate  which  appears  to 


XI  TOWARDS  THE   FUTURE  423 

be  overtaking  the  advocates  of  that  development  in 
thought  which  received  its  principal  impetus  from  the 
Manchester  school  in  England,  the  remarkable  and 
dramatic  features  of  the  situation  before  referred  to 
become  gradually  visible.  Inspired  as  the  leaders  of 
this  movement  have  been  with  the  inward  vision  of 
one  of  the  greatest  of  modern  scientific  truths,  namely, 
the  importance  of  the  principle  of  free  competition  in 
the  evolution  of  society  ;  perceiving  clearly,  moreover, 
despite  all  the  phenomena  of  opposition,  the  funda- 
mental relationship  of  this  master-principle  to  the 
causes  which  are  irresistibly  carrying  forward  the 
advancing  peoples  of  the  world  ;  we  see  them  in  our 
time  as  the  advocates  of  the  principle  of  uncontrolled 
competition,  standing,  almost  as  stood  the  leaders  of 
the  mediaeval  Church  — resolute,  sullen,  unconvinced 
—  at  bay  before  a  visibly  increasing  purpose  in  our 
civilisation,  which  seems  to  them  to  threaten  the  cen- 
tral and  supreme  article  of  their  faith.  It  is  when  we 
turn  to  the  conditions  under  which  the  development 
with  which  we  have  been  dealing  begins  to  extend 
now  beyond  the  relations  simply  of  capital  to  labour, 
and  to  draw  into  its  influence  the  more  extensive 
phenomena  of  our  civilisation,  that  the  deeper  interest 
of  the  situation  takes  firm  hold  upon  the  mind. 

When  we  look  back  once  again  over  the  history  of 
the  early  competitive  era  in  our  civilisation,  it  may  be 
perceived  that  there  is  one  idea  which  forms  the  lead- 
ing conception  of  the  school  of  thought  in  England 
identified  with  the  principles  of  that  period.  It  is  in 
reality  the  idea  which  provided  the  central  principle 
around  which  all  the  conceptions  of  the  Manchester 
school  revolved.  It  is  an  idea  which  can  be  stated 


424  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

more  clearly  and  satisfactorily  if,  in  words  at  least, 
we  disengage  it  altogether  from  the  theories  of  free- 
trade  and  free  exchange.  In  its  simplest  and  most 
scientific  form  it  might  be  put  as  follows :  It  was  held 
to  be  the  natural  and  ultimate  tendency  in  the  exist- 
ing world  for  the  conditions  in  industry,  commerce, 
and  business,  just  as  in  the  relations  of  capital  to 
labour,  to  reach  their  highest  and  most  efficient  devel- 
opment in  the  interest  of  society,  simply  in  obedience 
to  their  own  natural  and  inherent  tendencies. 

In  the  early  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
when  industry  and  commerce  were  still  suffering  from 
the  policy  of  governments  avaricious  on  behalf  of 
classes  or  of  interests,  it  was  only  natural  that  the  most 
enlightened  minds  should  advance  to  the  conclusion 
that  all  interference  of  the  State,  as  in  the  past,  was 
an  unmixed  evil.  In  the  writings  of  Adam  Smith, 
Ricardo,  and  the  Mills,  and  in  the  speeches  of  Cobden, 
we  are  always  in  the  presence  of  the  feeling  associated 
with  this  fact.  It  was  the  officers  who  sit  at  the 
receipt  of  custom  to  take  tithe  and  toll  for  the  benefit 
of  particular  classes  that  excited  the  anger  of  Cobden.1 
It  was  but  a  step  which  involved  a  scarcely  percep- 
tible advance  further  to  imagine,  and  to  assert  with 
conviction,  not  only  that  industry  and  business  best 
attained,  unaided  by  the  State,  the  ends  desired  by 
traders,  but  that  they  tended,  as  was  conceived  of  the 
relations  of  capital  to  labour,  to  reach  their  highest 
and  most  efficient  development  in  the  interest  of 
society,  simply  in  obedience  to  their  own  tendencies, 
in  that  condition  which  allowed  of  the  uncontrolled 
competition  of  all  rival  interests. 

1  Speeches,  p.  41. 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  425 

As  we  watch  the  next  phase  unfolding  itself  in 
Western  history,  it  soon  becomes  apparent  that  all 
the  phenomena  of  the  economic  process  are  closely 
related  to  a  single  governing  principle,  and  that  in 
the  affairs  of  industry,  as  in  the  relations  of  capital 
to  labour,  it  is  only  the  confusion  and  incompleteness 
of  the  first  stages  of  the  competitive  era  which  inter- 
vene to  prevent  the  mind,  for  a  time,  from  realising 
that  the  characteristic  and  essential  condition  of  free 
competition  which  it  has  become  the  significant  des- 
tiny of  our  civilisation  to  import  into  the  evolutionary 
process  is  in  reality  not  present  at  all. 

As  the  economic  process  has  continued  to  develop 
in  recent  times  the  tendencies  inherent  in  it  have 
become  gradually  visible.  In  the  first  place,  it 
has  become  obvious  that  through  an  immense  range 
of  activities  in  modern  industry  and  commerce,  the 
effectiveness  of  the  competitors  has  on  the  whole 
tended  to  rapidly  increase  with  the  size  and  centrali- 
sation of  the  concerns  engaged.  This  is  a  result 
due  to  two  causes  which  it  is  of  importance  to  keep 
quite  distinct  in  the  mind.  It  is  undoubtedly  true 
that,  in  economy  of  working,  and  in  the  increased 
efficiency  of  centralised  management,  large  organisa- 
tions under  modern  conditions  tend  as  a  matter  of 
course  to  become  up  to  a  definite  point  the  natural 
superiors  of  their  smaller  competitors.  But  beyond 
this  there  is  a  further  cause  which,  although  it 
remains  in  the  background  at  first,  becomes  visible 
at  a  subsequent  stage  as  a  ruling  factor  of  the 
competitive  process.  In  the  modern  conditions  of 
unregulated  conflict  it  has  become  obvious  that 
the  larger  organisations  also  secure,  in  respect  of 


426  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

their  size  and  resources,  and  altogether  apart  from 
their  efficiency,  an  immense  advantage  over  the  lesser 
rivals,  because  of  the  peculiar  inherent  strength  of 
which  they  become  possessed  simply  as  fighting  or- 
ganisations tending  in  time  to  become  absolute. 

For  a  time  the  largeness  of  the  stage  upon  which 
the  economic  drama  is  being  enacted  makes  it  diffi- 
cult for  the  mind  to  hold  the  controlling  principle  of 
the  situation.  Yet  as  the  small  industry  grows  by 
the  natural  laws  of  the  competitive  struggle  into  the 
great  industry,  there  begins  to  arrive  a  condition  in 
which  we  see,  just  as  in  the  relations  of  capital  to 
labour,  that  the  ultimate  conditions  of  free  competi- 
tion are  not  really  present.  Despite  the  great  ad- 
vance that  has  been  made  from  the  past  in  the 
conditions  of  competition,  the  ultimate  governing 
principle  of  economic  development  remains  that  of 
a  past  phase  of  the  evolutionary  process.  We  are 
regarding  a  free  fight,  of  which  the  principles  and 
controlling  meaning  are  still  entirely  in  the  present, 
in  which  the  forces  engaged  must  tend  to  eliminate 
all  elements  but  those  contributing  to  success  in  a 
free  fight,  and  in  which  the  whole  process  must  fall 
in  time  to  the  level  of  its  governing  principle.  Sooner 
or  later,  a  stage  must  be  reached  when  it  will  become 
visible  that  the  ultimate  conditions  are  not  those  of 
a  free  rivalry  of  forces,  but  of  approximate  monopoly. 

It  may  be  noticed,  accordingly,  as  the  development 
of  the  phase  of  the  competitive  process  between  rival 
organisations  in  industry  and  trade  has  progressed,  how 
strikingly  its  ruling  principles  resemble  those  of  the 
phase  already  discussed.  Here  also,  as  in  the  relations 
of  capital  to  labour,  we  see  the  advocates  of  uncon- 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  427 

trolled  competition  emphatic  at  the  beginning  in  the 
assertion  of  the  sufficiency  of  the  economic  process, 
not  only  to  right  itself,  but  to  serve  the  best  interests 
of  society  in  obedience  to  its  own  inherent  tendencies 
in  a  state  of  uncontrolled  competition.  Here  also,  as 
in  the  history  of  these  relations,  we  see  being  de- 
veloped for  a  time  a  large  body  of  authoritative  eco- 
nomic doctrine  defending  and  inculcating  the  prevail- 
ing conception  of  free  competition.  As  the  tendency 
in  industry  and  commerce  towards  the  combination 
and  concentration  of  the  concerns  engaged  develops, 
we  see  the  failure  of  the  first  ambitious  attempts  of 
large  combinations  of  capital,  that  have  aimed  in  the 
direction  of  monopoly,  complacently  emphasised  as 
proof  of  the  assertion  that  the  difficulties  in  the  way 
of  reaching  the  stage  of  monopoly  were  to  be  con- 
sidered insurmountable.  But  we  see  the  attempts 
themselves  continuing  to  be  made  ;  growing  the  while 
bolder,  more  far-reaching,  and  more  successful,  and 
gradually  bringing  into  clear  relief  the  inherent  natural 
principle  which  they  involve.  The  growing  tendency 
of  such  organisations  to  cross  international  boundaries, 
and  to  draw  together  with  the  avowed  aim  of  attain- 
ing to  monopoly,  and  of  extracting  from  the  resulting 
conditions  profits  altogether  exceeding  the  remunera- 
tion of  social  service  or  of  efficiency,  becomes  gradu- 
ally more  marked.  As  we  approach  the  time  in 
which  we  are  living,  the  tendency  becomes  visible, 
not  only  in  the  large  cities,  but  in  the  smallest  towns, 
for  all  the  great  avenues  through  which  the  general 
wants  of  the  world  are  supplied  to  be  controlled  by 
a  limited  number  of  large  organisations  tending  to 
further  concentration  of  their  growing  powers  and 


428  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

resources.  In  the  United  States  in  our  own  time 
we  see  combinations  in  industry  and  commerce  at  last 
attaining  to  a  phase,  which  seems  to  openly  challenge 
all  the  ideas  of  the  adherents  of  the  policy  of  uncon- 
trolled competition  as  advocated  in  an  earlier  period 
of  the  competitive  era. 

The  first  large  combination  of  capital  to  come 
within  sight  of  the  conditions  of  actual  monopoly, 
after  a  period  of  competition  in  which  it  practically 
destroyed  all  its  competitors,  and  in  which  the  inhe- 
rent tendency  of  the  struggle  always  to  be  maintained 
at  the  level  of  its  lowest  denominator  was  well  exem- 
plified, has  been  the  Standard  Oil  Trust  of  the  United 
States,  organised  as  such  in  1882.  The  record  of  the 
long  struggle  in  which  the  end  of  practical  monopoly 
was  attained  by  this  organisation ;  the  account  of  the 
practices  which  have  been  charged  to  it,  and  of  the 
methods  which  have  been  employed  by  it  in  obedience 
to  the  ruling  maxim  of  the  modern  competitive  era, 
namely,  that  every  such  organisation  is  in  business  to 
make  all  the  pecuniary  profit  it  can  within  the  rules 
of  its  own  interests  and  within  the  limits  of  an  uncon- 
trolled competitive  conflict ;  forms  one  of  the  most 
striking  and  remarkable  chapters  in  the  history  of 
modern  industry,1  the  real  significance  of  which  can 
hardly  be  said,  as  yet,  to  have  reached  the  general 
consciousness. 

Within  two  decades  of  the  successful  organisation 
of  this  combination  of  capital,  we  have  clearly  in  view 
what  is  undoubtedly  the  most  remarkable  economic 
phenomenon  of  the  modern  world  ;  namely,  the  gen- 
eral tendency  for  all  the  highest  activities  in  industry 

1  Cf.  Wealth  against  Commonwealth,  by  H.  D.  Lloyd. 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  429 

and  commerce  in  the  United  States  to  be  drawn  into 
the  vortex  of  the  same  conditions,  and  of  the  unmis- 
takable natural  tendency  of  these  conditions  to  become 
universal.  Despite  the  temporary  checks  which  are 
inevitable,  the  formation  of  trusts  and  combinations 
of  capital  in  the  United  States  has,  on  the  whole,  con- 
tinued with  rapidity  during  the  period  in  question.  It 
is  in  full  progress  in  England,1  and  is  rapidly  extend- 
ing to  the  industries  of  the  continent  of  Europe.  The 
assertions  that  such  combinations  were  likely  to  be 
ultimately  successful  only  in  respect  of  what  have 
been  termed  natural  monopolies ;  that  they  could  not 
succeed  in  permanently  raising  prices  ;  that  they  were 
in  any  case  only  the  product  of  conditions  of  protec- 
tion peculiar  to  the  United  States,  all  seem  on  the 
way  to  be  proved  to  be  as  devoid  of  any  real  founda- 
tion as  have  been  the  other  assertions  of  a  like  nature 
made  at  an  earlier  stage  by  the  advocates  of  uncon- 
trolled competition.  So  far  from  being  a  product 
extraneous  to  the  conditions  of  unrestricted  competi- 
tion, such  combinations  of  capital  are  rather  the 
characteristic  products  of  those  conditions.  As  Paul 
de  Rousiers  has  shown,  they  are,  in  many  respects,  to 
be  regarded  as  a  direct  consequence  of  the  spirit  pre- 
vailing in  the  English-speaking  world,  under  the 
standards  of  laissez-faire  competition.  In  the  United 
States  they  have  been  produced,  as  he  points  out,  by 
the  action  of  the  very  arrangements  by  which  the 
State  has  endeavoured  to  keep  companies  dealing  in 
large  public  utilities  in  competition  with  each  other; 
so  that  monopoly,  in  the  result,  has  become  "  natu- 

1  Compare  various  articles  of  Mr.  Robert  Donald  on  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Trust  System  in  Europe. 


43O  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

ral,  normal,  and  obligatory,  and  nothing  is  efficient 
against  it."  l 

1  The  conditions  under  which  the  development  took  place  in  the 
United  States  of  America  are  thus  described  :  —  "  Monopoly  constituted 
in  opposition  to  the  will  of  cities  or  states  is  a  purely  American  phe- 
nomenon. The  administration  of  continental  Europe  offers  no  exam- 
ples of  it.  It  results  from  the  peculiar  conception  which  obtained  in 
the  United  States  in  the  first  half  of  this  century  concerning  the  func- 
tions of  the  State,  of  local  government,  and  of  city  administration. 
These  functions  were  reduced  to  a  minimum.  Material  conditions 
then  permitted  it ;  agriculture  was  the  ruling  occupation,  and  there 
were  few  great  fortunes.  Besides,  Anglo-Saxon  spirit  tended  to  organ- 
ise strongly  private  life,  and  to  defend  it  from  all  intervention  of  public 
powers,  rather  than  to  assure  the  development  of  these  latter.  But  the 
habit  of  treating  public  affairs  as  if  they  were  private  produced  a  veri- 
table confusion.  Concessions  were  granted  to  companies  in  every  case 
where  they  could  be  made.  But,  in  place  of  imposing  guarantees  upon 
these  companies  in  ceding  to  them  all  or  part  of  their  monopoly,  the 
public  authorities  exercised  their  ingenuity  to  put  them  in  competition 
with  one  another,  thinking  that  competition  would  assure  cheapness 
here  as  in  ordinary  affairs.  Since  the  public  put  all  its  hope  in  the 
efficiency  of  competition,  it  was  very  disagreeably  surprised  to  see  that 
here  competition  did  not  long  persist.  The  situation  was  all  the  more 
serious  because  the  public  found  itself  disarmed.  Monopoly  was  or- 
ganised against  it  and  without  compensation.  The  means  which  people 
had  imagined  would  prevent  it  proved  an  illusion.  The  companies, 
often  provided  with  perpetual  charters,  shut  themselves  up  in  their 
rights.  The  only  resource  which  remained  was  to  attack  them  in  the 
name  of  the  common  law,  or  by  means  of  laws  against  trusts,  which 
declared  null  all  combinations  which  aimed  at  monopoly.  Neither  of 
these  means,  however,  has  been  very  efficacious.  While  in  private  in- 
dustry a  conjunction  of  exceptional  circumstances  is  necessary  to  create 
monopoly,  in  the  organisation  of  public  services  it  is  the  nature  of  the 
business  which  creates  the  monopoly.  Instead  of  being  exceptional,  as 
in  ordinary  affairs,  monopoly  is  here  natural,  normal,  obligatory,  and 
nothing  is  efficient  against  it.  The  abandonment  of  a  public  service 
without  sufficient  guarantee  is  here  what  has  produced  the  abuse  " 
(Paul  de  Rousiers,  "  Les  services  publics  et  la  question  des  monopoles 
aux  Etats-Unis,"  Revue  politique  et  parlementaire,  October  1898; 
American  Journal  of  Sociology,  vol.  iv.  5). 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  431 

The  many  drastic  legislative  measures  that  have 
been  directed  against  trusts  in  the  United  States  are 
considered  to  have  all  failed  of  their  purpose.  But  in 
this  result,  as  Mr.  J.  D.  Forrest  in  a  recent  examina- 
tion of  the  subject 1  points  out,  the  noteworthy  fact 
which  confronts  the  observer  is  that  they  have  failed 
because  they  have  not  been  able  to  strike  at  trusts 
without  at  the  same  time  striking  at  something  which 
is  inherent  in  the  competitive  process  as  it  now  exists, 
namely,  the  '  Great  Industry '  in  private  hands.  For 
the  combinations  of  capital  in  trusts  represent,  in 
effect,  but  the  phenomenon  of  the  drawing  together 
of  the  outstanding  rivals  in  the  competitive  struggle 
to  prevent  the  mutual  exhaustion,  waste,  and  effort  of 
the  final  stages  of  the  competitive  conflict.  But,  if 
the  struggle  had  continued  to  the  end,  the  last  phase 
in  any  case  must  have  been  the  Great  Industry.  And 
all  the  laws  against  trusts  betray  the  fatal  weakness, 
says  Mr.  Forrest,  that  none  of  them  have  been  able 
to  strike  directly  at  this,  the  main  fact.  The  Great 
Industry  is,  in  short,  a  result  so  closely  interwoven 
with  the  meaning  of  the  competitive  process  as  it  has 
hitherto  existed  in  the  English-speaking  world  that, 
as  Mr.  Forrest  points  out,  even  if  legislative  action 
had  ventured  to  attack  it,  "constitutional  limitations, 
so  far,  would  render  the  law  void."2 

As,  however,  the  development  has  rapidly  proceeded, 
features  of  the  situation,  at  first  in  the  background, 
have  come  at  last  to  present  themselves  vividly  to  the 
general  imagination.  The  combination  and  concen- 
tration of  capital  engaged  in  the  same  business,  and 

1  Am.  Jour.  Sociology,  vol.  v.  2,  "The  Control  of  Trusts." 
» Ibid. 


432  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

then  in  businesses  nearly  allied,  has  proceeded  apace 
until  the  total  of  the  wealth  represented  has  altogether 
exceeded  anything  imagined  in  the  earlier  phases  of  the 
competitive  era.  Combinations  in  the  United  States, 
in  which  a  capital  of  fifty  millions  of  dollars  was  at 
first  considered  to  be  an  enormous  sum,  have  been 
left  far  behind  in  point  of  magnitude.  Capitals  of 
fifty  millions  have  grown  rapidly  into  capitals  of 
hundreds  of  millions,  and  even  these  mount  towards 
thousands  of  millions,  the  tendency  towards  aggre- 
gation continuing  to  be  as  pronounced  as  before. 
The  powers,  the  resources,  the  aims  of  these  combina- 
tions tend  to  overshadow  those  of  the  State  itself. 
Yet  what  is  becoming  clear  to  the  general  mind  is, 
that  not  only  are  they  all  exercised  without  any 
relation  to  the  social  responsibilities  with  which  the 
purposes  of  the  State  are  identified,  but  that,  under 
existing  conditions,  it  is  an  inherent  law  of  their 
being  that  they  should  be  so  exercised.  For  Pro- 
fessor Adams'  law  of  the  inherent  necessity  of  the 
unregulated  competitive  process  to  reduce  itself  to 
the  level  of  its  lowest  ruling  factor  meets  them  at 
every  step.  It  is  strikingly  illustrated  in  the  well- 
known  maxim  of  all  such  organisations,  that  they  are 
in  business  simply  to  make  all  the  money  they  can. 
That  it  should  be  otherwise  is  not  only  impracticable, 
it  is  in  the  end  impossible.  That  such  organisations 
of  capital  should  not  endeavour  to  extract  the  greatest 
profit  out  of  the  situation,  that  they  should  not  en- 
deavour to  obtain  the  best  prices  possible  for  their 
wares,  would  be  felt  to  be  incongruous  even  by  their 
critics.  "  The  spectacle  of  a  trust  of  shrewd  Ameri- 
can business  men  asking  the  benediction  of  its  fellow- 


JO  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  433 

citizens  upon  its  own  philanthropy,"  says  a  recent 
writer  sarcastically,  nevertheless  with  just  insight, 
"  is,  to  say  the  least,  a  touching  testimony  to  the  cre- 
dulity of  those  to  whom  the  appeal  is  addressed." 

As  the  concentration  in  a  few  hands  of  the  gigan- 
tic resources  and  powers  of  such  organisations  of 
capital  has  continued,  a  distinctive  feature  has 
accordingly  been  their  tendency  to  use  this  irrespon- 
sible strength  in  accordance  with  the  inherent  pur- 
pose of  their  existence.  Beneath  the  surface  of 
national  and  even  of  international  affairs  their  influ- 
ence has  begun  to  make  itself  felt.  "  I  see  enough 
every  day,"  are  the  quoted  words  of  a  politician  in 
the  United  States,  with  opportunities  of  judging  of 
the  tendencies  of  the  movement  in  its  early  stages, 
"to  satisfy  me  that  the  petitions,  prayers,  protesta- 
tions, and  profanity  of  sixty  millions  of  people  are  not 
as  strong  to  control  legislative  action  as  the  influence 
and  effort  of  the  head  of  a  single  combine  with  fifty 
millions  of  dollars  at  his  back."  And  already,  in 
speaking  of  combinations  of  capital,  the  aggregate 
quoted  might  be  more  than  twenty  times  as  large.1 
The  inevitable  and  far-reaching  tendencies  of  such  a 
condition  within  the  body  politic  may  well  be  imag- 
ined. No  description  within  the  limits  of  a  treatise 
of  this  sort  could  do  justice  to  it.  However  well- 
intentioned  the  individual  in  the  struggle,  however 
high  or  exemplary  his  wishes,  he  is  in  the  thrall  of 
conditions  which  are  inexorable.  The  law  of  the 
conflict  before  mentioned,  that  it  must  regulate  itself 
at  the  level  of  its  ruling  factor,  that  the  competitors 

1  Cf.   The  Lesson  of  Popular   Government,  by  Gamaliel  Bradford, 
vol.  i.  p.  509,  q.  fr.  Hon.  B.  II.  Butterfield  of  Ohio. 
2F 


434  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

who  are  destined  to  survive  in  it  must  survive  in  a 
struggle  to  make  all  the  money  they  can  in  an  irre- 
sponsible free  fight  for  private  profit,  meets  him  at 
every  step. 

In  the  result  we  have  the  development  of  a  vast 
social  phenomenon  peculiar  to  our  time,  namely,  the 
accumulation  by  a  comparatively  small  number  of 
persons  under  these  conditions  of  fortunes  of  colossal 
magnitude.  No  conditions  which  prevailed  under 
the  most  rigorous  absolutisms  of  the  ancient  world 
allowed  of  such  results.  The  inherent  and  elemental 
barbarism  of  conditions  —  even  when  due  allowance 
is  made  for  services  rendered  to  society  in  the  first 
stages  in  the  organisation  of  industry  —  under  which 
a  private  citizen  is  able  to  accumulate  out  of  what 
must  ultimately  be  the  "  enforced  disadvantage "  of 
the  community,  a  fortune  tending  to  equal  in  capital 
amount  the  annual  revenue  of  the  United  States  or 
Great  Britain  begins  to  deeply  impress  the  general 
imagination. 

Even  where  the  individual,  as  is  often,  and  even 
generally  the  case,  rises  at  last  in  the  disposal  of 
such  a  fortune  above  the  level  of  the  conditions 
which  have  produced  it,  the  result  is  hardly  less 
striking.  The  subconscious  effort  to  reconcile  the 
dualism  between  the  standards  of  two  entirely  dif- 
ferent epochs  of  the  world's  evolution  as  represented 
in  the  modern  economic  process  is  plainly  in  evi- 
dence. As  the  knights  and  barons  of  the  early 
feudal  ages,  when  brought  under  the  influence  of 
Christianity,  devoted  the  wealth  which  they  had 
acquired  under  other  standards  to  the  founding  of 
churches  and  the  endowment  of  charities,  so  the  pos- 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  435 

sessors  of  the  colossal  fortunes  acquired  under  the 
conditions  of  the  phase  of  the  competitive  process 
in  which  we  are  living,  tend  in  some  measure  to  en- 
deavour to  restore  them  to  the  public  by  the  found- 
ing of  libraries,  the  endowment  of  universities,  and 
the  initiation  of  large  works  of  public  philanthropy. 

Yet  the  crudity  and  even  barbarism  of  the  princi- 
ple that  has  projected  itself  into  the  modern  economic 
process  remains  visible  even  in  these  circumstances. 
The  deterioration  likely  to  be  produced  by  charity  to 
the  individual,  even  under  the  most  carefully  guarded 
conditions,  is  well  known.  There  is  no  reason  to 
expect  that  the  same  result  could  ultimately  be 
avoided  in  the  case  of  charity  on  a  large  scale  to  the 
public  or  the  State.  It  is  not  necessary  to  agree 
with  the  statement  recently  made  in  a  responsible 
manner,1  that  the  effect  of  capitalistic  influences  in 
American  academic  endowments  will  be  marked  for 
evil  in  the  future  political  evolution  of  the  United 
States,  to  see  what  is  clearly  in  evidence  in  other 
respects  in  England,  namely,  that  it  is  not  a  healthy 
social  state  in  which  enormous  sums  of  wealth  and 
capital  are  devoted  to  public  purposes,  under  such 
conditions  of  private  charity  or  munificence  however 
well  intentioned.  It  is  easy  to  conceive  to  what  a 
state  of  profound  public  and  private  demoralisation, 
and  even  degradation,  such  practices  might  lead  if 
continued  on  a  large  scale  through  a  few  generations. 

If  we  go  now  a  step  farther  and  lift  the  veil  from 
the  inner  working  of  the  prevailing  phase  of  the  com- 
petitive process  as  it  is  displayed  in  the  general  busi- 
ness life  of  the  world,  it  may  be  distinguished  how 

1  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  The  Spectator,  i6th  March  1901. 


436  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

the  whole  process  falls  gradually,  as  by  an  inherent 
law  of  gravity,  in  a  particular  direction.  As  the  com- 
petitive process  in  modern  business  has  grown  slowly 
to  its  full  natural  intensity,  the  effect  has  been  more 
and  more  to  eliminate  all  principles  and  considera- 
tions from  the  struggle  but  those  contributing  to 
fitness  therein.  But  as  the  process  is  essentially  a 
free  unregulated  fight,  of  which  all  the  meaning  and 
principles  are  in  the  present,  it  has  of  necessity 
tended  to  ultimately  regulate  itself  at  the  level 
simply  of  the  qualities  contributing  to  success  and 
survival  in  a  struggle  of  such  a  character. 

When,  therefore,  attention  is  withdrawn  from  those 
superficial  details  of  persons  and  causes  which  only 
maintain  themselves  in  a  more  or  less  sheltered  or 
artificial  existence  in  the  interstices  of  the  business 
life  of  the  time,  and  is  concentrated  on  the  governing 
realities  of  the  commercial  struggle  of  the  modern 
world,  we  have  a  spectacle  which  is  in  all  respects  the 
supplement  to  that  which  we  have  just  been  con- 
sidering. No  student  of  social  conditions,  who  looks 
beneath  the  surface  of  the  business  life  of  the  present 
day  in  England,  can  doubt  for  a  moment  the  existence 
of  a  deepening  consciousness  in  the  general  mind  of 
a  wide  interval  between  what  may  be  termed  the 
business  and  the  private  conscience  of  the  individual 
in  the  current  phase  of  the  economic  process.  It 
may  be  studied  in  documents  like  the  annual  reports 
made  to  Parliament  under  the  Companies'  Winding-up 
Act,  or  the  report  of  the  special  committee  appointed 
by  the  London  Chamber  of  Commerce  to  inquire  into 
secret  commissions  in  trade.  It  is  equally  notorious 
in  the  United  States.  The  profoundly  felt  sense  of 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  437 

moral  self-stultification  already  referred  to  as  the 
daily  experience  of  an  increasing  multitude,  both  in 
the  ranks  of  capital  and  labour,  is  undoubtedly  a 
significant  social  phenomenon  of  the  time.  It  is  to 
be  encountered  in  all  phases  of  commercial  life.  It 
is  a  problem  which  confronts  the  student  of  social 
ethics  under  innumerable  forms,  involving  results 
which  are  rightly  described  as  being  often  beyond 
the  imagination  of  those  who  live  protected  lives 
under  shelter  of  assured  incomes.1 

That  this  moral  dualism  in  business  is  not  confined 
to  the  lower  grades  of  commercial  life  where  the 
struggle  for  existence  might  be  considered  to  be 
severest,  but  that  it  is  a  result  more  distinctive  of  the 
higher  financial  phases  of  commercialism  may  also  be 
distinguished.  A  characteristic  feature  accompanying 
the  present  tendencies  of  capital  to  accumulation  in 
trusts  and  corporations  in  the  United  States  is,  says 
Mr.  Forrest,  the  dishonesty  "which  mercilessly  fleeces 
the  legitimate  investor  in  the  securities  of  the  corpora- 
tion."2 In  these  combinations  the  capitalisation  is 
often  commonly  inflated  on  paper  merely  in  the  inter- 
ests of  those  who  promote  them,  so  that,  "  the  manipu- 
lation of  this  stock,  not  the  carrying  on  of  the  industry, 
is  the  main  interest  of  the  promoters."  8  The  fortunes 
to  be  made  in  the  result  are  such  as  to  excite  the 
cupidity  of  men.  But,  it  is  added  significantly,  "  the 
great  prizes  are  for  the  most  unscrupulous."4 

It  must  not  be  taken  that  such  tendencies  and 
results  are  in  any  way  peculiar  to  the  conditions 

1  Graham  Taylor,  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  vol.  v.  3. 
a  "The  Control  of  Trusts,"  by  J.  D.  Forrest,  University  of  Indianapolis, 
Am.  Jour.  Sociology,  vol.  v.  2.  8  Ibid.  *  Ibid. 


438  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

prevailing  in  the  United  States.  They  are  at  least 
equally  well  marked  in  Great  Britain.  In  the  Report 
of  the  Inspector-General  in  Companies'  Liquidation, 
England,  made  in  the  penultimate  year  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  it  was  stated  that  in  the  preceding 
twelve  months  there  were  4653  new  companies  regis- 
tered, while  the  number  that  went  into  liquidation 
was  I/45.1  As  to  the  actual  sums  lost,  the  figures 
complete  as  far  as  two  years  previously  were  given. 
They  revealed  what  a  daily  journal  described  as  "the 
appalling  fact  that  in  that  year,  on  companies  repre- 
senting a  total  capital  of  46^  millions,  the  public  lost 
no  less  a  sum  than  21  millions  sterling."  2  That  fraud 
and  misrepresentation  must  have  been  rampant  on 
every  hand  is  taken  to  be  obvious.  The  journal 
significantly  adds :  "  What  is  most  menacing  to  the 
interests  of  the  investor  is  the  utter  lack  of  commer- 
cial morality  in  every  department  of  business  con- 
nected with  company  promotion.  If  an  individual 
buys  a  business,  or  a  mine,  or  a  brewery,  for  five 
thousand  pounds,  and  goes  to  a  capitalist  and  asks 
him  to  buy  it  of  him  for  thirty  thousand  pounds,  and 
to  work  it  as  well,  he  is  very  properly  treated  as  a 
lunatic.  But  if  the  same  individual  asks  the  public 
to  buy  his  bargain  of  him  on  the  same  terms  his 
impudence  is  not  only  condoned,  but  justified  by 
the  company-promoting  world  on  the  ground  that  the 
public  must  look  after  itself.  .  .  .  Then  it  is  con- 
sidered a  fair  thing  for  seven  or  more  men,  themselves 
perfectly  solvent,  to  embark  in  a  particular  enterprise, 
involving  great  risk,  which  is  floated  on  the  credit  of 

1  Eighth  Annual  Report  by  the  Board  of  Trade  under  sec.  29  of  the 
Companies'  (Winding- up)  Act.        2  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  7th  Dec.  1899. 


XI  TOWARDS  THE   FUTURE  439 

their  individual  reputations,  and  to  incur  liabilities  on 
the  strength  of  the  same  reputations  ;  then,  if  the 
enterprise  fails,  to  shelter  themselves  behind  their 
limited  liability  and  leave  the  creditors  in  the  lurch. 
In  neither  case  is  it  honest  trading.  But  the  law 
allows  it,  and  it  is  done."  J 

And  so  the  dualism  is  in  evidence  on  all  hands. 
It  is  often  considered  that  joint-stock  enterprises, 
undertaken  by  a  company  of  shareholders  and  man- 
aged by  a  board  of  directors,  are  but  the  expression 
of  the  application  to  business  and  industry  of  the 
principles  of  modern  representative  government. 
But  any  observer  who,  going  beyond  the  academic 
theories  of  an  earlier  phase  of  the  competitive  pro- 
cess, studies  the  subject  practically  for  himself,  finds 
sooner  or  later  how  entirely  superficial,  and  even 
absurd,  such  a  conception  really  is.  There  must  have 
been  in  the  past,  as  there  still  continue  to  be,  private 
enterprises,  owned  by  a  corporate  body  of  share- 
holders, all  fairly  informed  ;  all  intelligently  interested 
in  the  distant  and  solid  success  of  the  undertaking ; 
all  joined,  moreover,  in  such  feelings  of  loyalty  to  a 
common  cause  and  a  collective  undertaking  as  oper- 
ate elsewhere  in  the  world.  But  what  the  observer 
begins  gradually  to  realise  is  that  such  conditions  are 
almost  entirely  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  modern  specu- 
lative enterprise.  The  management  of  such  enter- 
prises, although  it  may  deal  with  affairs  of  the 
widest  public  interest  and  importance,  is  mostly  con- 
ducted entirely  in  the  dark.  Although  it  may  be 
concerned  with  financial  affairs  almost  on  the  scale 
of  those  of  the  State  itself,  it  is  generally  concentrated 

i  Pall  Mall  Gazette. 


440  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

in  a  few  hands  and  autocratic  in  the  highest  degree. 
Most  serious  of  all,  there  is,  therefore,  no  informed 
public  opinion  either  to  criticise  it  or  keep  it  in  check. 
In  such  circumstances  the  shareholders  tend  to  be- 
come a  mere  body  of  isolated  units  without  informa- 
tion, whose  interest  must,  necessarily,  be  largely 
speculative,  and  with  a  considerable  element  of  the 
gambling  spirit  behind  it.  Readjustments,  amalga- 
mations, or  reorganisations,  causing  wide  fluctuations 
in  values,  encourage  this  attitude,  and  by  enabling 
fortunes  to  be  made  in  a  short  time  by  those  possess- 
ing inner  knowledge  of  the  affairs  of  the  undertaking 
tend  to  demoralise  all  concerned.  The  dualism  which 
prevails  meets  the  observer  at  every  step.  Even  in 
cases  where  gross  mismanagement  or  fraud  has 
brought  affairs  to  the  brink  of  ruin,  the  observer  is 
often  surprised  to  find  how  different  is  the  attitude 
of  those  most  deeply  concerned  to  that  which  might 
be  expected.  The  spectacle  is  often  not  so  much 
that  a  number  of  partners  loyally  cooperating  to  put 
an  enterprise  once  more  on  its  feet,  as  that  of  a  body 
of  ignorant  speculators  anxious  to  come  to  some  spe- 
cious arrangement  by  which  they  may  sell  their  hold- 
ings to  the  public,  with  advantage  to  themselves  — 
with  the  feeling  in  the  background  that  if,  in  so  doing, 
they  act  as  they  would  not  dream  of  acting  as  pri- 
vate individuals,  their  conduct  will  be  in  the  words 
of  the  journal  already  quoted,  "not  only  condoned, 
but  justified  by  the  company-promoting  world  on  the 
ground  that  the  public  must  look  after  itself."  The 
process,  in  short,  everywhere  tends,  as  in  Professor 
Adams'  example,  to  be  governed  at  the  level  of  its 
lowest  and  ruling  denominator. 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  44! 

It  must  not  be  considered  that  it  is  the  intention 
of  the  State  to  allow  the  evils,  of  which  those  here 
mentioned  are  but  the  outside  fringe,  to  continue. 
The  attempt  is  constantly  being  made  in  England 
to  grapple  with  them  by  legislation.  But  the  deeply 
significant  fact  is  that  the  cry  goes  up  continually 
that  the  remedies  attempted  are  inoperative.  What 
we  seem  to  have  in  view  is  a  stage  of  the  economic 
process  when  the  conceptions  of  the  first  phase  of 
the  competitive  era  are  no  longer  applicable.  For 
here,  just  as  in  the  United  States  with  the  measures 
passed  to  control  trusts,  the  problem  with  which 
failure  is  associated,  the  problem  with  which  the  law 
is  always  confronted  in  the  last  resort,  is,  how  to 
take  any  effective  measures  against  the  evil  which 
it  is  desired  to  suppress ;  and  yet  not  strike,  at  the 
same  time,  at  what  have  been  universally  accepted 
as  fundamental  principles  of  business,  of  speculation, 
and  of  enterprise  in  the  phase  of  the  competitive 
process  through  which  we  have  lived. 

It  is  impossible  to  avoid  receiving  a  deep  impres- 
sion of  the  significance  of  these  results  and  tenden- 
cies in  our  time.  They  are  undoubtedly  all  phases 
of  the  same  development.  It  would  seem  that  we 
have  reached  a  period  in  which  it  is  becoming  evident 
that  the  governing  principle  of  the  social  process 
in  our  civilisation  altogether  transcends  the  meaning 
associated  with  the  conception  of  free  competition 
in  the  phase  of  the  competitive  era  through  which 
we  have  passed.  Even  in  relation  to  matters  so 
fundamental  as  the  principles  regulating  supply 
and  demand  throughout  the  world,  it  has  become 
the  duty  of  the  economist,  as  so  thoughtful  a  repre- 


442  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

sentative  of  the  historical  school  as  Professor  Ashley 
informs  us,  to  consider  that  we  are  probably  on  the 
verge  of  a  state  of  society  in  which  prices  generally 
will  be  no  longer  determined  by  competition.1  Yet, 
before  we  endeavour  to  interpret  the  character  of  the 
future,  towards  which  these  events  appear  to  be 
advancing,  it  is  desirable  to  turn  our  attention  for 
a  moment  to  an  examination  of  the  remarkable  posi- 
tion which  is  the  correlative  of  them  ;  namely,  that 
to  which  we  have  been  carried  in  the  world  by  the 
application  of  the  most  characteristic  of  all  the  doc- 
trines of  the  early  competitive  era,  the  doctrine  of 
international  trade,  as  it  has  been  developed  by  the 
laissez-faire  school  of  thought  in  England. 

Now  we  have  seen,  in  following  through  the  pre- 
ceding chapters  the  unfolding  of  the  evolutionary 
process  in  our  Western  era,  that  its  meaning  must  be 
held  to  consist  essentially  in  the  fact  that  it  repre- 
sents the  great  drama  of  development  in  which  the 
world  is  passing  under  the  control  of  the  governing 
principles  with  which  the  larger  interests  of  the  future 
are  identified.  The  ideal  towards  which  the  advanced 
peoples  are  being  carried  therein  is,  therefore,  of 
necessity,  that  of  an  open,  fair,  and  free  rivalry,  in 
which,  in  the  interests  of  this  future,  the  potentiality 
of  all  natural  powers  shall  be  completely  enfranchised. 
And  the  characteristic  principle,  the  development  of 
which  is  represented  in  our  civilisation,  is  that  which 
is  emancipating  the  future  from  the  tyranny  of  all  the 
forces  tending  to  become  absolute  in  the  present. 
We  have  seen  that  the  necessary  cause  and  condition 
which  accompanies  this  development  is  the  projec- 

1  Cf.  Economic  Journal,  No.  34,  "  American  Trusts,"  by  W.  J.  Ashley. 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  443 

tion  of  the  controlling  sense  of  human  responsibility 
out  of  the  present.  That  is  to  say,  social  develop- 
ment among  the  winning  peoples  is,  by  necessity 
inherent  in  the  evolutionary  process,  tending  more 
and  more  to  represent  a  principle  which  is  projecting 
its  meaning  beyond  the  content  of  all  existing  inter- 
ests. The  process  of  progress,  in  short,  no  longer 
tends,  as  in  the  ancient  civilisations,  towards  the 
ascendency  therein  of  qualities  merely  necessary  to 
success  and  survival  in  a  free  fight,  all  the  principles 
of  which  are  contained  within  the  limits  of  political 
consciousness. 

If  the  observer  looks  back  over  the  history  of  the 
movement  in  England,  in  which  the  first  conception 
of  free  competition  was  extended  to  the  principles  of 
commerce  between  nations,  it  may  be  observed  that, 
almost  from  the  beginning,  a  very  clearly  defined  atti- 
tude or  policy  in  international  relations  accompanied 
the  economic  theories  of  the  Manchester  school. 
Throughout  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
this  attitude  came  to  be  described  by  various  names, 
according  to  the  point  of  view  of  those  who  discussed 
it.  It  is,  on  the  whole,  most  generally  known  as  the 
attitude  of  Non-intervention,  although,  as  we  shall  see 
presently,  it  would  in  many  senses  be  still  more  cor- 
rectly described  as  the  attitude  of  Non-responsibility. 
To  understand  the  nature  of  the  international  posi- 
tion to  which  we  are  now  slowly  advancing  in  the 
world,  it  is  of  great  importance  that  the  mind  should, 
at  this  point,  clearly  grasp  the  relationship  of  this 
policy,  of  non-responsibility  in  international  relations, 
to  the  fundamental  ideas,  already  described,  of  the 
laissez-faire  or  Manchester  school,  and  to  perceive 


444  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

how  naturally  the  whole  theory  of  international  trade 
with  which  it  is  associated  has  proceeded  from  the 
fundamental  position  taken  up  by  that  school  in  the 
two  phases  of  the  competitive  era  already  described. 

Now,  if  we  recall  the  character  of  the  movement 
in  Western  history  towards  economic  freedom,  of 
which  Schmoller  described  the  first  stages  in  our 
civilisation,  it  will  be  found  that  its  leading  features 
have  a  strongly  marked  character.  This  movement, 
as  we  have  before  pointed  out — contrary  to  the  impres- 
sion which  might  have  been  received  of  it  from  the 
theories  of  the  Manchester  school  —  represented  in 
the  past  no  automatic  process  unfolding  itself  with- 
out stress  in  history,  in  obedience  to  the  dictates  of 
existing  interest.  On  the  contrary,  every  step  in  it 
was  resisted,  and  resisted  in  perfect  good  faith  and 
intelligence,  by  the  interests  concerned.  It  was  not 
to  the  immediate  interest  of  the  town  to  have  its 
economic  life  merged  in  that  of  the  territory.  It 
similarly  was  not  to  the  advantage  of  the  territory, 
in  turn,  to  have  its  economic  life  merged  in  that  of 
the  national  State.  The  fiercest  conflict  against  the 
process  was  waged  at  all  points  ;  and  the  opposition 
was  borne  down  only  in  the  presence  of  a  larger 
overruling  cause,  which  already  represented,  in  effect, 
the  subordination  of  the  present  to  the  future.  It  was, 
in  short,  around  those  inchoate  ideals  which  embodied 
this  principle  of  the  subordination  of  the  present  to 
the  future — ideals  imperfectly  described  by  Schmoller 
as  those  of  nationality  or  state-making — that  the 
whole  process  of  economic  development  centred.1 

1  We  have  a  phase  of  the  same  idea  represented  in  Professor  Gid- 
dings'  theory  of  kinship  as  a  factor  in  the  evolutionary  process  in  society. 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  445 

It  will  be  remembered  how,  in  the  relations  of 
capital  to  labour  within  the  limits  of  industry,  the 
Manchester  school  consistently  held  it  to  be  no  func- 
tion of  the  State  to  interfere  between  the  adult  em- 
ployed and  the  employer  in  that  condition  of  "free 
contract "  which,  it  was  asserted,  prevailed  in  a  state 
of  laissez-faire  competition  within  the  State.  Simi- 
larly, carrying  this  idea  into  the  relations  to  each 
other  of  industries,  still  within  the  limits  of  the  State, 
it  was  held  to  be  no  function  of  Government  to  inter- 
fere with  the  results  obtained  in  the  conflict  between 
rival  industries  in  the  same  condition  of  uncontrolled 
competition.  In  both  cases  all  criticism  was  met  with 
the  confident,  but,  as  we  have  seen,  entirely  unfounded 
assertion  that  the  tendency  of  all  economic  evils  was 
to  cure  themselves  if  simply  left  alone  to  the  free 
play  of  the  forces  of  self-interest. 

This  was  the  attitude  which  we  have  now  to  see 
carried  one  stage  further,  to  its  last  and  highest  ap- 
plication, in  that  theory  of  international  trade  which, 
allowing  for  all  outward  exceptions,  has  dominated 
the  consciousness  of  the  English-speaking  world  and, 
through  it,  that  of  our  civilisation  in  general,  for  the 
greater  part  of  the  epoch  in  which  we  are  living. 

In  the  larger  world  of  international  relations  the 
principle  of  non-intervention  or  of  non-responsibility 
as  asserted  by  the  laissez-faire  school  yielded  a  singu- 
larly clear  and  consistent  attitude.  No  country,  it 
was  asserted  in  effect,  had,  as  a  general  principle, 
any  concern  with  the  internal  affairs  of  other  peoples, 
or  with  the  character  of  the  Government,  or  with 
the  standards  of  conduct  or  of  social  development 
which  prevailed.  What  was  desired  was  simply  the 


446  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

removal  of  all  barriers  to  trade  and  the  opening  up 
of  the  international  world  to  a  condition  of  laissez- 
faire  competition  in  business  and  commerce.  It  was 
confidently  predicted,  here  also,  that  in  the  resulting 
conditions  of  unrestrained  competition  in  pursuit  of 
self-interest,  economic  evils  would  cure  themselves ; 
and  that  a  large  part  of  those  which  afflicted  the 
world  would  finally  disappear  in  obedience  to  the 
inherent  tendencies  of  the  uncontrolled  competitive 
process,  carried  thus  to  its  last  and  highest  develop- 
ment in  the  process  of  international  trade. 

As,  accordingly,  this  wider  phase  of  the  economic 
process  has  unfolded  itself  on  the  stage  of  history, 
principally  at  first  under  the  lead  of  England,  the 
tendencies  that  have  gradually  become  visible  in  it 
are  of  great  interest.  Looking  back  over  the  history 
of  the  economic  development  of  Great  Britain  for 
nearly  a  century  it  presents  a  remarkable  spectacle. 
The  dissociation  of  what  may  be  called  the  collective 
consciousness  of  the  English-speaking  peoples  from 
the  course  of  the  commercial  process  in  its  inter- 
national relations  has  been  almost  complete.  The 
trader  has  followed  the  interests  of  commerce  in 
all  directions  as  these  interests  have  led  him.  Where 
the  activities  of  Great  Britain  have  come  into  contact 
throughout  the  world  with  those  of  peoples  in  all 
stages  of  development,  the  trader  has  supplied  to  all 
comers  her  manufactured  products,  machinery,  pro- 
cesses, instruction,  management,  and  capital,  on  no 
other  principle  than  that  of  the  private  profit  of  the 
interests  concerned.  In  the  uncontrolled  pursuit  of 
the  end  of  private  gain  the  capitalist  or  the  trader 
has,  therefore,  gone  inside  all  frontiers.  He  has 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  447 

carried  on  his  operations  under  all  standards  of  govern- 
ment and  systems  of  religion,  and  under  every  phase 
of  ethical  development.  He  has  exploited  all  oppor- 
tunities, all  natural  resources,  and  all  conditions  of 
human  society  and  of  human  labour.  And  the  ruling 
principle  has  been  everywhere  the  same  ;  that  of  self- 
interest  in  an  uncontrolled  competition  for  private 
gain.  Capital  in  pursuit  of  this  object  has,  therefore, 
professed  no  principle  and  acknowledged  no  respon- 
sibility. "We  have  no  commission,"  said  Cobden, 
with  emphasis,  "  to  administer  justice  to  the  world." 
The  dissociation  of  collective  sense  of  responsibility 
from  the  operations  of  the  international  trader  has 
been  practically  complete. 

As  this  third  phase  of  the  competitive  era  gradually 
advances  towards  its  climax  the  interest  deepens. 
The  conditions  of  feverish  activity  in  every  depart- 
ment of  trade  and  commerce  which  have  followed  the 
application  by  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States 
to  their  affairs  of  the  conception  of  laissez-faire  com- 
petition in  international  trade,  have  in  time  affected 
all  the  advanced  peoples.  Despite  prevailing  excep- 
tions the  spirit  proceeding  from  these  conditions  must 
undoubtedly,  as  we  have  said,  be  considered  to  be  the 
distinctive  and  characteristic  quality  in  the  ascendant 
in  modern  commercialism  throughout  the  world. 

If  we  look  now  at  the  result,  it  may  already  be 
distinguished  to  be  in  all  respects  the  complement 
and  sequel  of  the  two  phases  of  economic  develop- 
ment already  described.  The  immensity  of  the  stage 
upon  which  the  world-wide  development  is  in  progress 
here  also  obscures,  for  a  time,  and  to  a  far  greater 
degree  than  in  the  other  phases,  the  ruling  principles 


448  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

of  the  situation.  But  slowly,  as  the  tendency  to  the 
equalisation  of  conditions  continues  throughout  the 
world,  we  see  the  whole  process,  in  this  case  as  in 
the  others,  gravitating  to  a  level  beyond  which  it  has 
no  inherent  tendency  to  rise. 

In  the  two  phases  of  the  competitive  era  already 
described,  that  is  to  say,  first  of  all,  in  the  struggle 
between  capital  in  its  relation  to  labour,  and  then  in 
the  struggle  between  industries  in  their  relation  to 
society,  we  saw  that  every  organisation  of  capital  was 
of  necessity  in  the  competition  of  business  to  make 
all  the  money  it  could  within  the  limits  of  its  own 
interests.  So  now  we  begin  to  see  that  the  govern- 
ing principle  of  all  international  trade,  whatever  other 
purpose  it  may  incidentally  subserve,  being  essen- 
tially that  of  an  uncontrolled  struggle  for  private 
gain,  one  result  has  been  from  the  beginning  inherent 
in  the  international  process  in  progress  in  the  world. 
The  capitalist  and  trader  who  went  inside  all  fron- 
tiers, and  exploited  all  conditions  of  society  and  of 
human  labour,  did  so  always  in  the  lien  of  conditions 
from  which  he  was  in  the  end  powerless  to  escape. 
The  competition  in  which  he  was  engaged  with  his 
fellows  necessarily  tended,  just  as  in  the  example 
cited  by  Professor  Adams,  to  eliminate  in  the  end  all 
principles  and  considerations  from  the  struggle  but 
those  which  contributed  to  success.  And  so,  as  in  the 
two  phases  of  laissez-faire  competition  previously 
described,  we  see  the  international  process  in  trade 
slowly  tending,  throughout  the  world,  to  be  regulated 
in  all  its  details  at  the  level  of  the  lowest  qualities 
governing  it,  namely,  those  contributing  to  success 
and  survival  in  a  free  fight  for  private  gain. 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  449 

Now  the  evolutionary  significance  of  the  character- 
istic development  represented  by  the  civilisation  of 
our  era  consists,  as  we  have  seen,  in  raising  the 
human  process  beyond  the  level  of  that  struggle  for 
existence  in  the  present  at  which  it  had  hitherto 
been  conducted  in  the  world.  That  is  to  say,  its 
tendency  has  been,  in  all  the  development  which  has 
succeeded  the  life  of  the  ancient  civilisations,  to  pro- 
ject the  meaning  of  the  social  process  altogether  be- 
yond the  content  of  those  lower  qualities  contributing 
merely  to  success  and  survival  in  a  free  fight,  all  the 
principles  of  which  are  bounded  by  the  horizon  of 
the  present.  This  is  the  meaning,  in  the  first  phase 
of  the  existing  competitive  era,  of  that  demand  for 
the  regulation  of  the  conditions  for  the  employment 
of  women,  of  children,  and  of  unskilled  labour ;  of  the 
cry  for  a  living  wage  ;  and  of  the  struggle  for  the 
standard  of  life.  This  is  the  meaning,  also,  in  the  sec- 
ond phase  of  that  era,  of  the  determination,  now  vis- 
ibly rising  throughout  our  civilisation,  to  subordinate 
the  uncontrolled  rivalry  between  aggregates  of  capi- 
tal to  the  larger  meaning  of  the  social  process  as  a 
whole.  In  all  these  facts  we  are,  as  it  were,  in  the 
presence  of  the  first  phenomena  which  mark  the  con- 
ditions under  which  the  development  we  have  traced 
through  the  preceding  chapters,  in  which  the  ascen- 
dency of  the  present  in  the  evolutionary  process  is 
being  gradually  challenged  throughout  the  whole 
range  of  human  activities,  begins  to  impinge,  at  last, 
upon  the  economic  process  in  the  modern  world. 

As,  however,  that  current  phase  of  the  interna- 
tional economic  process  in  which  we  are  living  reaches 
its  final  development  in  the  conditions  in  which  the 


450  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

capitalist  and  trader  have  gone  inside  all  frontiers  to 
exploit  all  human  conditions,  while  owning  no  respon- 
sibility and  no  principles  save  those  contributing  to 
success  and  survival  in  a  free  fight  for  private  gain, 
the  outlines  of  one  of  the  most  remarkable  situations 
in  history  become  rapidly  filled  in. 

In  the  first  phase  of  the  modern  competitive  era  in 
our  civilisation,  it  was  the  conditions  arising  from  the 
exploitation  by  capital,  for  private  gain,  of  helpless 
and  unskilled  labour  within  the  State,  in  a  struggle 
which  the  Manchester  school  sought  to  divorce  from 
all  sense  of  social  responsibility,  and  which  was  bound, 
therefore,  to  fall  to  the  level  of  its  lowest  governing 
factor,  that  constituted  the  basis  upon  which  the 
whole  economic  structure  rested.  So,  in  the  inter- 
national phase  of  laissez-faire  competition,  the  first 
fact  which  we  encounter  is  this  same  phenomenon 
raised  to  its  highest  expression  on  the  world-stage. 
It  is  now  the  conditions  arising  throughout  the 
world,  from  the  exploitation  of  the  less  developed 
peoples  of  the  human  family  in  the  same  irresponsi- 
ble and  uncontrolled  struggle  for  private  profit,  which 
tends  to  confront  us  as  the  ruling  fact  in  the  prevail- 
ing economic  situation  throughout  the  modern  world. 

If  we  turn,  first,  to  the  consideration  of  this  ques- 
tion in  connection  with  the  growth  of  the  British 
empire,  we  have  presented  to  us  an  extraordinary 
record.  In  the  history  of  the  expansion  of  that  em- 
pire from  the  period  at  which  the  British  peoples  took 
over  the  responsibility  for  the  government  of  the  mis- 
managed commercial  empire  of  the  East  India  Com- 
pany, down  to  the  last  phase  of  its  development  in 
Africa,  we  see  as  it  were  the  collective  consciousness 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  451 

of  the  English-speaking  people  struggling,  just  as  in 
the  other  phases  of  the  economic  process  already 
described,  with  the  tendencies  of  two  entirely  dis- 
tinct eras  of  human  evolution.  At  times  in  this 
conflict  we  see  it  giving  the  reins  completely  to  the 
governing  tendencies  of  the  past ;  and  yet  again  at 
transient  moments,  overmastered  by  the  subconscious 
inspiration  of  the  future,  we  see  it  giving  effect  in  its 
more  instinctive  acts  to  a  meaning  and  part  in  the 
world-process  completely  transcending  the  objects  of 
its  conscious  policy.  During  the  greater  part  of  the 
phase  of  the  competitive  process  of  which  we  are 
speaking,  the  ascendency  in  the  councils  of  the  home 
government  in  England  of  that  central  principle  of 
the  Manchester  school,  which  dissociated  the  sense 
of  responsibility  from  the  course  of  the  economic 
process  throughout  the  world,  has  been  almost  com- 
plete. Yet  as  the  exploitation  of  the  less  developed 
peoples  of  the  world  in  the  interests  of  private  gain 
has  continued,  a  series  of  unforeseen  results,  often  at 
first  sight  confusing  to  an  extraordinary  degree  but 
in  reality  all  proceeding  from  the  same  cause,  have 
followed. 

In  the  first  stage,  the  results  of  the  irresponsible 
exploitation  of  less  developed  peoples  in  the  interests 
of  private  cupidity  have  been  such  that  they  have 
continually  engaged  attention,  and  at  times  revolted 
the  general  conscience  at  home  to  such  a  degree,  that 
the  stage  of  non-responsibility  has,  by  force  of  circum- 
stances, and  often  in  conditions  of  explosion,  passed 
over  to  the  stage  of  direct  political  control.  At  a 
later  stage  still,  as  other  European  peoples  have 
begun  to  take  part  in  the  exploitation  of  the  world, 


452  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

and  the  British  trader  and  capitalist  have  come  into 
competition  with  those  of  other  nationalities,  in  a 
process  in  which  all  the  countries  of  the  world  tend 
to  come  into  a  common  market  to  compete  for  a  fall- 
ing margin  of  profit,  another  development  has  fol- 
lowed. The  British  trader  in  the  new  circumstances 
has  found  himself  confronted  with  rivals  whose  meth- 
ods were  more  frankly  barbarous  than  his  own,  —  and 
yet,  withal,  engaged  with  them  in  a  competitive  pro- 
cess of  exploitation  necessarily  governed  in  the  last 
resort  at  the  level  of  its  lowest  factor.  The  results 
in  the  long  run  have  tended,  as  might  be  expected, 
still  more  surely  to  outrage  the  general  conscience  at 
home.  They  have,  therefore,  even  more  directly, 
operated  to  drag  the  influence  of  the  home  govern- 
ment at  the  heels  of  trade  in  other  lands ;  and  the 
stage  of  non-interference  has  in  this  case  also,  and 
still  more  rapidly,  tended  to  pass  over  into  that  of 
political  control. 

It  has  been,  in  short,  a  process  in  which  the  ex- 
pansion of  the  British  empire  has  continued  without 
thought ;  without  defined  responsibility  ;  almost  with- 
out consent.  In  it  we  see,  as  it  were,  the  collective 
consciousness  of  the  British  peoples  halting  between 
the  governing  principles  of  two  distinct  epochs  of  the 
world's  evolution  ;  on  the  one  hand  repudiating,  with 
consistency  and  intention  under  the  ruling  standards 
of  the  Manchester  school,  the  whole  theory  of  empire, 
of  government,  and  of  responsibility  in  relation  to  the 
peoples  with  whom  it  came  into  contact  in  the  pro- 
cesses of  trade.  And  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  as  the 
foremost  representative  in  Western  history  of  a  still 
deeper  principle  involved  in  our  civilisation  from  the 


Xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  453 

beginning,  and,  therefore,  in  obedience  to  a  sense  of 
responsibility  from  which  it  found  that  it  was  in  the 
last  resort  impossible  to  escape,  building  up,  even  by 
the  very  mechanism  of  the  superficial  theory  of  repudi- 
ation itself,  that  empire  without  parallel  or  precedent 
in  history,  which  in  the  opening  year  of  the  twentieth 
century  had  come  to  embrace  a  third  of  the  entire 
population  of  the  world. 

As  we  follow  within  the  frontiers  of  the  empire  the 
course  of  the  same  development,  in  which  we  see  a 
universal  process  of  exploitation  in  trade  falling  gradu- 
ally to  the  level  of  its  lowest  factor  under  the  ruling 
principle  of  non-responsibility,  the  results  are  hardly 
less  striking.  It  is  nowadays  a  matter  of  common 
knowledge,  that  in  one  of  the  modern  phases  of  the 
development  proceeding  throughout  the  world  British 
capital  exhibits  a  tendency  to  migrate  from  the  irk- 
someness  in  England  of  the  State  regulation  of  the 
factory  system,  of  the  living  wage,  and  of  that  rising 
standard  of  life  for  labour  which  has  marked  the 
impingement  upon  the  economic  process  of  the  vast 
development  we  have  traced  through  Western  history 
in  the  preceding  chapters.  British  capital,  for  in- 
stance, has  endeavoured  to  establish  itself  in  India, 
to  take  from  Lancashire  its  trade  in  cottons  with 
China,  by  the  competition  of  Indian  mills,  worked 
by  cheaper  labour  in  India  under  standards  of  life 
separated  by  an  immense  interval  of  development 
from  those  so  hardly  won  in  England.  As  the  devel- 
opment of  the  world  under  the  influence  of  laissez- 
faire  competition  has  proceeded,  the  process  has, 
however,  shown  no  tendency  to  stop  here.  One  of 
the  last  of  the  less  developed  peoples  to  be  brought 


454  WESTERN   CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

under  the  influence  of  Western  conditions  has  been 
the  Japanese.  But  as  the  Japanese  have  been  slowly 
caught  in  the  influence  of  an  economic  process  con- 
tinuing to  fall  throughout  the  world  to  the  level  of 
its  ruling  factor,  they  have  in  their  turn  now  tended 
to  enter  the  lists  to  compete  with  Indian  capitalists 
for  the  same  end  of  supplying  China  with  cotton 
goods.  Let  us,  therefore,  having  in  view  the  tremen- 
dous struggle  which  Lancashire  labour  waged  through- 
out the  greater  part  of  a  century  past  to  secure  higher 
standards  of  life  for  its  class,  draw  aside  now  for  a 
moment  the  veil  from  the  prevailing  labour  conditions 
in  Japan,  with  which  Lancashire  tends  thus  to  be 
confronted  in  the  world-process,  at  the  other  end  of 
a  chain  of  sequences,  all  the  links  of  which  here  dis- 
close themselves  to  view  under  our  eyes. 

In  an  article  published  in  the  first  year  of  the 
twentieth  century  an  American  writer  gives  a  strik- 
ing description  of  a  characteristic  scene  of  industrial 
Japan,  the  significance  of  which  is  only  enhanced  by 
the  fact  that  the  scene  itself  is  described  without  any 
reference  to  the  problem  we  are  here  discussing.  "  If 
I  were  asked,"  says  the  writer  in  question,1  "to  say, 
of  all  that  I  saw  in  Japan,  what  that  is  that  lives  most 
vividly  in  my  memory,  I  should  probably  shock  my 
artistic  reader  by  saying  that  it  was  the  loading  of  a 
steamship  at  Nagasaki  with  coal.  The  huge  vessel, 
the  Empress  of  Japan,  was  one  morning,  soon  after  its 
arrival  at  Nagasaki,  suddenly  festooned  —  I  can  use 
no  other  word  —  from  stem  to  stern  on  each  side  with 
a  series  of  hanging  platforms,  the  broadest  nearest 
the  base  and  diminishing  as  they  rose,  strung  together 

1  The  Right  Rev.  H.  C.  Potter,  Bishop  of  New  York. 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  455 

by  ropes,  and  ascending  from  the  sampans,  or  huge 
boats  in  which  the  coal  had  been  brought  alongside 
the  steamer,  until  the  highest  and  narrowest  platform 
was  just  below  the  particular  port-hole  through  which 
it  was  received  into  the  ship.  There  were,  in  each 
case,  all  along  the  sides  of  the  ship,  some  four  or  five 
of  these  platforms,  one  above  another,  on  each  of 
which  stood  a  young  girl.  On  board  the  sampans 
men  were  busy  filling  a  long  line  of  baskets  holding, 
I  should  think,  each  about  two  buckets  of  coal,  and 
these  were  passed  up  from  the  sampans  in  a  continu- 
ous and  unbroken  line  until  they  reached  their  desti- 
nation, each  young  girl,  as  she  stood  on  her  particular 
platform,  passing,  or  rather  almost  throwing,  these 
huge  basketfuls  of  coals  to  the  girl  above  her,  and 
she  again  to  her  mate  above  her,  and  so  on  to  the  end. 
The  rapidity,  skill,  and,  above  all,  the  rhythmic  pre- 
cision with  which,  for  hours,  this  really  tremendous 
task  was  performed,  was  an  achievement  which  might 
well  fill  an  American  athlete  with  envy  and  dismay. 
....  And  at  this  task  these  girls  continued,  unin- 
terruptedly and  blithely,  from  ten  o'clock  in  the 
morning  until  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  putting 
on  board  in  that  time,  I  was  told,  more  than  one 
thousand  tons  of  coal.  I  am  quite  free  to  say  that  I 
do  not  believe  that  there  is  another  body  of  work-folk 
in  the  world  who  could  have  performed  the  same  task 
in  the  same  time  and  with  the  same  ease."  l 

The  concluding  remarks  here  quoted  may  be  in  all 
respects  true.  There  may,  indeed,  be  no  other  body 
of  work-folk  in  the  world  who  could  have  performed 
the  task  here  described  with  the  same  ease  and  in  the 

1  "  Impressions  of  Japan,"  The  Century,  vol.  Ixi.  5. 


456  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

same  way.  But  as  the  mind  gradually  takes  in  all 
that  this  typical  scene  really  implies  ;  as  there  is 
passed  before  it  the  history  of  that  long  struggle, 
described  in  the  preceding  chapters,  with  which  the 
meaning  of  our  civilisation  is  identified  ;  as  there  is 
recalled  before  it  the  character  of  the  evolutionary 
process  in  which  the  emancipating  principles  have 
been  born  into  the  world  which  have  gradually  raised 
the  position  of  woman  above  the  animal  conditions 
here  implied  ;  as  there  is  presented  to  the  imagina- 
tion even  the  last  phases,  still  with  us  in  England 
and  America,  of  that  tremendous  struggle  in  which 
the  standards  of  existence  for  labour  have  been  lifted 
with  such  prolonged,  determined,  and  devoted  effort 
to  even  the  comparatively  low  level  they  have  so  far 
attained ;  there  grows  upon  it  an  overmastering 
sense  of  the  essential  shallowness  and  immaturity  in 
relation  to  the  deeper  life-processes  of  our  civilisation 
of  that  entire  view  of  the  Manchester  school,  which 
sought  to  divorce  all  sense  of  responsibility  from  the 
results  reached  in  national  and  international  trade  and 
production  in  obedience  to  their  own  inherent  ten- 
dencies. We  begin,  in  short,  to  have  some  sense  of 
the  real  nature  of  the  problem  which  overshadows  the 
consciousness  of  Western  Democracy,  as  it  sees  the 
international  process  in  trade  and  industry  tending 
throughout  the  world  to  be  forced  to  the  level  of  its 
lowest  and  most  animal  conditions  in  human  labour, 
simply  in  obedience  to  that  law  of  universal  equalisa- 
tion of  economic  conditions  by  capital,  in  the  irre- 
sponsible scramble  for  private  gain  divorced  from  all 
sense  of  responsibility  which  the  Manchester  school 
consistently  contemplated. 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  457 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  this  represents  any 
extreme  or  forced  view  of  a  principle.  It  is  a  sober 
presentation  of  what  has  been  already  actually  fore- 
seen and  contemplated.  It  may  be  recalled  here  that 
in  the  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  a  scien- 
tific forecast  of  the  ultimate  phase  of  the  laissez-faire 
competitive  process  in  international  trade  throughout 
the  world  was  attempted  by  the  late  Charles  Pearson, 
in  which  the  author,  carrying  the  principles  of  the 
Manchester  school  to  their  last  application,  calmly 
contemplated  as  a  probable  fact  of  the  near  future  a 
condition  of  civilisation  in  which,  the  tendency  to 
equalisation  in  the  international  economic  process 
having  proceeded  to  its  limits,  that  process  would 
continue  to  be  permanently  ruled  throughout  the 
world  at  the  level  of  this  lowest  factor,  namely,  the 
prevailing  standards  of  life  of  the  less  developed 
peoples,  and  particularly  of  the  yellow  races.1  We 
were,  therefore,  to  awake  to  a  day  not  far  distant, 
Mr.  Pearson  predicted,  when  we  should  look  round  the 
globe  and  see  it  girdled  by  a  continuous  zone  of  the 
black  and  yellow  races,  no  longer  too  weak  for  aggres- 
sion, but  monopolising  the  trade  of  their  own  regions, 
circumscribing  the  industry  of  the  European,  taken 
up  into  the  social  relations  of  the  Western  peoples, 
and  admitted  to  intermarriage  with  the  white  races. 
The  time  was  not  improbably  close  at  hand,  Mr. 
Pearson  assumed,  when,  in  consequence,  we  should  by 
force  of  circumstances  have  to  realise  that  the  idea 
that  the  future  of  the  world  belonged  to  the  Aryan 
peoples,  to  the  Christian  faith,  and  to  our  Western 

1  National  Life  and  Character,  c.  i.-iii. 


458  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

civilisation,  had  been  little  more  than  a  passing 
delusion.1 

Despite  the  profound  materialism  of  such  a  predic- 
tion ;  despite  the  surroundings  of  moral  and  intellec- 
tual squalor  towards  which  it  contemplated  the  world 
as  moving;  despite  even  the  inherent  absurdity 
which,  in  the  face  of  the  obvious  meaning  of  the 
social  evolutionary  process  in  the  past,  actually  saw 
the  lower  forms  of  human  society  extinguishing  the 
higher,  by  reason  of  their  capacity  to  wage  an  eco- 
nomic struggle  on  more  purely  animal  conditions, 
the  deep  and  lasting  impression  which  the  prediction 
produced  on  a  large  circle  of  well-informed  minds, 
particularly  in  England,  went  to  show  how  accu- 
rately it  was  recognised  as  being,  in  reality,  no  more 
than  the  legitimate  application  of  those  theories  of 
the  Manchester  school  which  had  been  in  the  ascen- 
dant in  Great  Britain  for  the  greater  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 

From  time  to  time,  particularly  as  we  approach  the 
period  in  which  we  are  living,  deep,  volcanic  impulses 
of  human  nature  have  disturbed  the  complacent  the- 
ories of  non-responsibility  that  have  made  a  prediction 
of  this  nature  possible.  The  refusal  of  labour  in  the 
United  States  and  Australia  to  admit  the  Chinese  as 
citizens,  who  would  by  their  competition  reduce  the 
standards  of  wages  and  of  living  far  below  those  to 
which  they  have  been  raised  with  such  effort  in  our 
civilisation,  has  been  an  incident  in  which  determined 
expression  has  been  found  for  a  far-reaching  instinct, 
with  which  governments,  otherwise  under  the  influence 
of  the  ascendant  conceptions  of  laissez-faire  competi- 

1  National  Life  and  Character,  c.  i. 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  459 

tion,  have  had  to  count.  It  has  been  a  fact,  which, 
though  for  the  moment  producing  little  outward  effect 
on  prevailing  theories,  has  operated  powerfully,  as  other 
features  of  the  underlying  situation  have  continued 
to  define  themselves,  to  bring  home  to  more  thought- 
ful minds  how  far  indeed,  here  as  everywhere  else, 
the  problems  with  which  laissez-faire  competition 
now  tends  to  confront  us  throughout  the  world  have 
outgrown  in  character  the  earlier  conceptions  of  the 
competitive  era  in  England. 

In  China,  the  twentieth  century  opened  upon  a 
spectacle  in  which  we  see  the  principle  here  de- 
scribed carried,  as  it  were,  to  its  last  expression 
in  the  world-process.  Under  the  inspiration  of  the 
old  policy  of  non-responsibility,  practically  two  ideals 
were  presented  to  the  English-speaking  world,  as 
the  capitalistic  exploitation  of  the  Chinese  peoples 
began  to  make  progress  in  our  time.  The  first 
was  that  which  we  saw  in  the  ascendant  in  the 
minds  of  the  English  people  during  the  greater  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  was  that  under  which, 
all  responsibility  for  results  in  China  being  repudiated, 
it  was  maintained  that  the  trader  or  capitalist  should 
be  allowed  to  follow  his  purposes  in  the  competitive 
process  of  trade  under  the  ruling  principle  of  non- 
interference. As,  however,  all  Western  civilisation 
had  gradually  become  enveloped  in  the  influences 
and  methods  of  the  commercial  process  as  it  had 
spread  outwards  from  England  and  the  United 
States,  and  as  the  traders  and  capitalists  of  other 
nations  had  now  become  equally  keen  in  the  competi- 
tive struggle  for  private  gain,  this  idea,  in  China  as 
elsewhere,  became  in  a  few  decades  impossible  of 


460  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

realisation.  The  process,  therefore,  under  our  eyes 
passed  rapidly  to  its  next  stage,  in  which  all  efforts 
became  concentrated  on  the  second  objective  of  the 
school  of  laissez-faire  competition,  namely,  that  of 
keeping  the  door  of  trade  equally  open  to  comers  of 
all  nationalities,  while  still  repudiating  all  responsi- 
bility for  the  tendencies  and  results  of  the  competi- 
tive process.  In  the  result  we  see  that  process  once 
more  continuing  to  fall,  inevitably,  and  now  with 
extreme  rapidity,  to  the  level  of  its  ruling  factor. 
With  the  instinctive,  and  at  times  explosive  resistance 
of  the  Chinese  to  all  that  the  conditions  must  imply, 
there  has  tended  of  necessity  to  be  produced  a  kind 
of  international  control  by  all  the  Powers  concerned, 
including  Japan.  In  this  ring  of  control  we  have 
represented  the  standards  of  human  society  in  almost 
every  stage  of  development  from  those  of  Japan  to 
those  of  England  and  the  United  States.  In  such 
conditions  the  principles  we  have  seen  born  into  the 
world  as  the  result  of  the  long  development  described 
in  the  preceding  chapters  —  the  principles  of  which  the 
English-speaking  peoples  have  in  other  circumstances 
considered  themselves  the  most  advanced  representa- 
tives —  tend  to  be  reduced  to  a  common  denominator 
with  those  of  powers  and  peoples  separated  from 
them  by  entire  epochs  of  the  world's  development. 
And  in  the  resulting  circumstances,  the  competitive 
exploitation  of  Chinese  resources  proceeds  in  an  en- 
vironment of  international  intrigue,  of  social  squalor, 
and  of  moral  outrage  and  degradation  almost  without 
equal  in  history.  This  is  the  phase  of  the  situation 
which  is  still  with  us. 

And   so   the   principle   of   laissez-faire  and    non- 


M  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  461 

responsibility  in  the  competitive  process,  ascending 
gradually  from  the  relations  of  capital  to  labour 
through  a  range  of  economic  phenomena  of  unparal- 
leled significance  in  our  time,  passes  in  these  con- 
ditions to  its  last  expression  in  the  international 
world-process.  The  whole  of  the  phenomena  we 
have  been  regarding  are  the  features  of  a  single 
development.  They  are  all  related  to  the  fact  of 
the  ascendency  of  the  present  in  the  economic 
process.  They  are  all  expressions,  moreover,  of  the 
fact  that  the  struggle,  the  development  of  which  we 
traced  through  Western  history  in  the  previous  chap- 
ters, has  projected  itself  at  last  into  that  process 
under  all  its  aspects  throughout  the  world.  Under 
almost  every  condition  of  the  economic  life  of  the 
modern  world,  the  forces  and  tyrannies  which  repre- 
sent merely  the  present  are  now  in  turn  become  en- 
visaged in  conflict  with  the  principles  representing 
the  future,  as  the  development  of  which  our  civilisa- 
tion is  the  seat  continues  to  slowly  unfold  itself  in 
Western  history.  This  is  the  nature  of  the  situation 
that  is  outlined  on  the  stage  of  our  civilisation 
throughout  the  world.  Into  the  meaning  of  the 
cosmic  drama  which  underlies  it  all  the  activities  of 
the  advanced  peoples  are  destined  to  be  drawn. 
And  it  is  the  peoples  who  are  about  to  solve  the  re- 
sulting problem  in  economic  development,  as  the 
earlier  phases  of  the  problem  have  been  already 
solved  in  the  developments  described  in  the  preced- 
ing chapters,  to  whom  the  leadership  of  the  world 
undoubtedly  belongs  in  the  epoch  towards  which  our 
civilisation  is  moving. 

It  may  be  observed  that  the  idea  still  continues  to 


462  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

prevail  amongst  intelligent  minds  that  the  principle 
underlying  the  spectacle  of  laissez-faire  competition, 
that  we  have  here,  under  so  many  phases,  attempted 
to  describe  —  that  is  to  say,  the  principle  which  has 
dissociated  all  sense  of  responsibility  from  the  com- 
petitive process  in  industry,  in  trade,  in  commerce, 
and  in  the  international  exploitation  of  the  resources 
of  the  world  —  is  actually  the  same  principle  that  has 
been  behind  the  development  in  Western  history 
described  in  the  preceding  chapters  as  projecting  the 
controlling  sense  of  responsibility  out  of  the  present. 
The  opinion,  it  may  be  noticed,  survives  in  many 
minds  that  the  prevailing  conditions  of  competition 
in  our  civilisation  actually  represent  the  still  advanc- 
ing front  of  this  development  in  history.  All  due 
allowance  being  made  for  the  advance  which  the 
principle  of  laissez-faire  competition  involved  when 
compared  with  the  frank  feudalism  of  the  State  which 
preceded  it,  it  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  imagine  any 
conception  more  completely  inaccurate  than  that  here 
described.  It  represents  what,  in  many  respects,  is 
almost  the  exact  opposite  of  the  truth.  For  the 
evolutionary  significance  of  the  development  which  is 
projecting  the  sense  of  human  responsibility  out  of 
the  present,  and  which  is  dissociating  the  controlling 
meaning  of  the  historical  process  from  all  the  inter- 
ests and  compulsions  within  the  limits  of  political 
consciousness,  cannot  be  mistaken.  It  consists  in 
the  fact  that  it  is  enabling  the  competitive  process 
to  be  raised  to  its  highest  condition  of  efficiency  by 
the  emancipation  of  the  future  from  the  tyranny  of 
all  forces  tending  to  become  absolute  within  the  hori- 
zon of  the  present.  But  in  the  economic  process,  as 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  463 

we  have  seen  it  under  the  prevailing  conditions  of 
competition,  this  is  the  principle  which  is  entirely 
absent.  In  all  the  phases  of  laissez-faire  competition 
we  have  been  considering  we  are  everywhere,  in  the 
last  resort,  simply  in  the  presence  of  the  conditions 
of  a  free  fight,  falling  slowly  throughout  the  world  to 
the  level  of  the  qualities  necessary  to  success  and 
survival  in  a  struggle  of  such  a  character.  All  the 
principles  and  meanings  of  the  process  are,  therefore, 
still,  as  in  the  civilisations  of  the  ancient  world, 
bounded  by  the  present.  The  distinctive  and  char- 
acteristic principle  of  the  developmental  process  in 
the  civilisation  of  our  era  is  as  yet  unrepresented. 

When,  however,  we  turn  to  that  other  great  body 
of  advanced  opinion  which  has  left  the  theories  of 
the  Manchester  school  behind,  that  body  of  opinion, 
that  is  to  say,  which  expresses  itself  in  various  forms 
throughout  our  civilisation  under  the  phenomena  of 
the  socialist  movement,  we  have  a  spectacle  almost 
equally  striking.  If  it  be  asked  whence  comes  the 
strength  of  conviction  which  has  supported  this 
movement  under  all  its  phases,  there  can  also  be  no 
doubt  whatever  as  to  what  the  reply  must  be.  The 
characteristic  instinct  which  is  common  to  all  the 
movements  of  thought  which  socialism  has  produced, 
however  they  may  have  mistaken  the  character  of  the 
evolutionary  process  in  Western  civilisation,  may  be 
readily  distinguished  by  any  observer  of  close  insight. 
It  consists  essentially  in  the  clear  recognition  that 
the  principle  underlying  all  the  forms  of  laissez-faire 
competition  is,  in  the  last  resort,  nothing  more  or  less 
than  what  we  have  here  found  it  to  be ;  namely,  a 
surviving  principle  of  barbarism,  necessarily  tending, 


464  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

under  all  its  phases,  towards  the  conditions  of  absolu- 
tism. In  the  last  analysis  it  does  not  represent,  and 
it  can  never  represent,  the  characteristic  social  prin- 
ciple with  which  the  meaning  of  our  civilisation  has 
been  from  the  beginning  identified  in  the  evolution- 
ary process. 

Here,  however,  it  may  be  observed,  a  curious 
result  has  followed.  The  main  body  of  thought 
which  socialism  has  hitherto  produced  has  been 
principally  the  product  of  the  earlier  stage  of  the 
struggle  between  capital  and  labour  in  those  con- 
ditions of  laissez-faire  competition  that  have  been 
already  described.  It  has,  therefore,  happened  that 
in  the  socialistic  conception  of  society  which  has  so 
far  obtained  most  adherents,  namely,  that  which  is 
associated  with  the  name  of  Marx,  the  whole  social 
process  has  tended  to  be  presented  as  if  it  consti- 
tuted merely  the  phenomena  of  a  gigantic  class  war 
between  labour  and  capital.  A  characteristic  feature, 
therefore,  of  Marxian  socialism,  as  has  been  insisted 
throughout  these  pages,  is  that  it  tends  to  interpret 
all  the  principles  of  social  development  merely  in 
terms  of  an  economic  struggle,  that  is  to  say,  in 
terms  of  a  war  of  interests  between  the  existing 
members  of  society.  Of  that  altogether  deeper 
meaning  of  the  evolutionary  process  in  Western 
history;  namely,  that  the  characteristic  struggle 
around  which  the  whole  process  of  development 
has  centred  from  the  beginning  of  our  civilisation 
—  the  struggle  of  which  the  economic  situation 
is  itself  but  the  latest  phase  —  is  essentially  not  a 
class  war  in  the  present,  but  a  struggle  in  which 
the  interests  representing  the  hitherto  ascendant 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  465 

present  are  being  slowly  envisaged  in  conflict  with 
those  representing  the  infinite  future,  to  which  they 
must  be  subordinated,  there  has  been  no  conception 
in  the  Marxian  presentation  of  socialism. 

We  are,  therefore,  face  to  face,  under  the  phe- 
nomena of  socialism  also,  with  a  significant  position. 
It  is  that  the  consistent,  thorough-going,  but  essen- 
tially superficial  materialism  which  has  of  necessity 
accompanied  the  Marxian  attempt  to  interpret  our 
social  development  merely  in  terms  of  an  economic 
conflict  —  that  is  to  say  in  terms  of  the  present  — 
and  which  has  its  correlative  in  more  or  less  me- 
chanical schemes  for  the  regimentation  of  existing 
society,  taking  us,  in  effect,  back  to  the  principles 
of  the  ancient  Greek  world,  is,  of  necessity,  rejected 
by  a  large  class  of  thinking  minds  throughout  our 
civilisation  as  obviously  falling  short  of  a  scientific 
interpretation  of  the  process  unfolding  itself  in  our 
civilisation.  It  provides  only  a  theory  of  society 
which  is  instinctively  perceived  to  fail  in  that  it  finds 
no  place  or  meaning  for  those  characteristic  qualities 
in  the  human  process  by  which  alone,  as  we  see  now, 
the  winning  peoples  must,  under  the  principle  of 
Projected  Efficiency,  maintain  their  place  in  the 
evolutionary  process  ;  namely,  the  qualities  contrib- 
uting to  success  in  that  tremendous  struggle  to 
adjust  the  current  interests  of  the  world  to  a  mean- 
ing which  infinitely  transcends  them. 

Now  if  we  have  been  right  in  the  view  taken 
in  these  chapters  of  the  character  of  the  evolutionary 
process  unfolding  itself  in  Western  history,  nothing 
can  be  more  certain  than  that  the  future,  towards 
which  the  development  in  progress  in  our  civilisation 

2H 


466  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

is  carrying  the  world,  must  have  this  characteristic. 
We  must  be  able  to  distinguish  in  it  the  principle 
of  continuity  which  at  once  reconciles  and  extends 
both  these,  to  all  appearance,  conflicting  views.  We 
must  be  able  to  see  in  it,  at  the  outset,  how  the  pro- 
found instinct  of  the  Manchester  school  of  thought 
in  England,  that  the  future  of  the  world  belongs  to 
the  principle  of  free  competition,  is  reconciled  with 
the  equally  profound  instinct  which  has  come  to  ex- 
press itself  through  the  theories  of  socialism,  that  the 
conditions  of  laissez-faire  competition  in  the  phases 
just  described  are  nothing  more  or  less  than  condi- 
tions of  barbarism  representing  the  survival  into 
modern  economic  history  of  the  ruling  principle  of  a 
past  epoch  of  development,  which  now,  under  all  the 
phases  described,  moves  slowly  towards  its  challenge 
in  the  world-process. 

It  will  be  recalled  at  this  point  how  continuously 
in  past  chapters  emphasis  has  been  laid  upon  a  sig- 
nificant fact  of  our  civilisation.  Western  civilisation, 
we  saw,  has  from  the  beginning  of  our  era  represented 
a  state  of  social  order  in  which  all  the  forces  that 
tend  to  become  absolute  in  the  present  are,  in  a  long 
process  of  development,  being  broken  and  subordi- 
nated to  the  larger  meaning  of  the  evolutionary  process 
in  a  future  which  is  infinite.  In  it,  therefore,  there  is 
represented  the  antithesis  of  the  ruling  principle  of 
the  military  civilisations  of  the  ancient  world,  the 
ultimate  meaning  of  which  was  that  they  expressed, 
in  effect,  the  ascendency  of  the  present  in  the  evolu- 
tionary process.  Our  civilisation  represents  that  type 
of  social  order  in  which,  if  existing  indications  are  not 
entirely  misleading,  the  military  order  of  society  is 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  467 

actually  destined  to  come  to  an  end.  And  yet,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  advanced  peoples  who  comprise  it 
themselves  represent,  not  by  accident,  but  as  a  first 
principle  of  the  development  which  is  taking  place, 
that  stock  of  the  human  family  amongst  whom  the 
military  process  has  culminated  in  the  race.  We  are 
par  excellence  the  military  peoples,  not  only  of  the 
entire  world,  but  of  the  evolutionary  process  itself  in 
human  history  in  the  past. 

The  dominating  significance  of  this  fact  in  the 
evolution  of  society  has  been  throughout  insisted  on. 
Under  no  other  conceivable  conditions  could  the 
principle  which  our  civilisation  represents  be  success- 
fully born  into  the  world.  It  was  only  by  the  con- 
version to  a  sense  of  responsibility  transcending  all 
interests  in  the  present  of  the  peoples  representing 
the  highest  possibilities  of  militarism  in  the  world,  — 
the  peoples,  that  is  to  say,  able  to  hold  the  present 
for  the  future  against  all  comers,  —  that  the  perma- 
nent conditions  could  ever  arise  in  which  the  con- 
trolling centre  of  the  evolutionary  process  could  begin 
to  be  projected  out  of  the  present. 

But  it  is,  it  may  be  perceived,  exactly  the  same 
principle  which  has  been  behind  the  whole  process  of 
development  in  our  civilisation  as  described  in  the 
preceding  chapters.  It  was  only  the  conversion  to 
the  new  order  of  ideas,  in  the  upheaval  which  closed 
the  Middle  Ages,  of  an  element  of  force  in  our  civili- 
sation strong  enough  to  hold  for  the  future  the  stage 
of  the  world  on  which  these  ideas  were  to  develop, 
that  enabled  the  modern  epoch  to  be  born  in  our 
civilisation.  It  was  only  by  the  later  conversion, 
amongst  the  advanced  peoples,  of  the  State  itself  — 


468  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

with  the  machinery  of  its  irresistible  power  in  the 
background  —  to  a  principle  of  tolerance  resting  ulti- 
mately on  a  sense  of  responsibility  to  principles  pro- 
jected beyond  the  content  of  all  interests  within  the 
bounds  of  political  consciousness,  that  it  became  pos- 
sible for  the  present  to  be  held  for  the  future  in 
modern  political  development.  It  has  been  the  prin- 
ciple of  tolerance  so  held  that  has  made  possible  the 
phenomenon  of  party  government  among  the  English- 
speaking  peoples ;  that  has  constituted  the  ultimate 
fact  behind  that  conception  of  political  equality  from 
which  the  forward  movement  in  the  modern  State  has 
proceeded ;  nay,  which  has  made  possible  the  very 
conditions  of  free  thought  itself  by  preventing  the 
absolutism  naturally  inherent  in  every  theory  of  inter- 
ests bounded  by  the  limits  of  political  consciousness 
from  again  closing  down  upon  us  in  the  present.  The 
principle  identified  at  every  point  with  the  develop- 
ment of  the  winning  peoples  in  our  civilisation  has 
been  the  same  as  that  which  made  it  possible  to 
develop  our  civilisation  itself  only  from  the  leading 
military  stock  of  the  world.  It  has  been  the  fact  of 
the  all-powerful  State  converted  to  a  principle  of  tol- 
erance projected  beyond  the  limits  of  its  own  political 
consciousness,  and,  therefore,  becoming  rigid,  irre- 
sistible, and  inexorable  when  this  principle  of  tol- 
erance is  threatened,  which  has  given  us  the  modern 
world  and  all  the  conditions  of  modern  progress. 
And  even  such  conditions  of  freedom  in  the  modern 
sense  as  prevail  amongst  peoples  who  have  not  ac- 
cepted this  principle  are  scarcely  more  than  its  indi- 
rect results,  ultimately  maintained  in  the  world  only 
by  the  example  and  overwhelming  prestige  of  the 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  469 

conditions  proceeding  from  it  amongst  the  peoples 
who  have  evolved  it. 

Now,  if  we  apply  this  principle  to  the  conditions 
in  which  we  see  the  conception  of  laissez-faire  com- 
petition being  confronted  with  that  body  of  thought 
which  is  rapidly  passing  to  the  challenge  of  the 
ascendency  of  the  present  in  the  economic  process 
throughout  the  world,  there  emerges  into  sight  a 
clear  and  striking  conclusion.  The  principle  of 
laissez-faire  competition,  as  we  have  just  seen  it, 
under  all  its  phases,  reaching  its  last  expression  in 
the  world-process,  cannot  by  any  pretence  be  said  to 
represent  that  condition  of  the  social  process  with 
which  the  efficiency  of  the  future  is  identified  —  that 
condition  in  which  all  natural  powers  are  to  be  en- 
franchised in  the  world  in  a  regulated  process  of  fair, 
open,  and  free  rivalry.  It  represents,  as  we  have 
seen,  in  the  last  resort,  nothing  more  than  the  sur- 
vival into  the  economic  process  of  the  ascendency  of 
the  forces  expressing  themselves  through  the  present 
and  tending  under  all  conditions  towards  absolutism 
in  some  form ;  the  principle,  that  is  to  say,  of  that 
past  order  of  the  world's  development  which  it  is  the 
destiny  of  our  civilisation  to  supersede. 

There  is,  therefore,  in  the  economic  process  also 
but  one  condition  in  which  the  present  can  ulti- 
mately pass  under  the  control  of  the  future.  All  the 
political  developments  which  have  taken  place  are 
but  steps  leading  up  to  the  establishment  of  that 
condition.  It  is  only  by  the  conscious  conversion  to 
a  sense  of  responsibility  transcending  the  claims  of 
all  present  interests  of  the  only  power  able  in  the 
economic  process  to  hold  the  stage  in  the  present 


4/0  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

that  the  new  order  of  society  can  be  born  into  the 
world.  There  is  only  one  conceivable  condition  in 
which  this  result  can  be  accomplished.  The  con- 
sciousness of  society,  expressing  itself  through  the 
State,  but  here  also  in  obedience  to  a  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility rising  superior  to  all  the  interests  within 
the  limits  of  the  State,  must,  in  the  economic  pro- 
cess, hold  the  stage  free  and  open  in  the  present 
during  the  epoch  in  which  it  has  become  the  destiny 
of  the  present  to  pass  under  the  control  of  the 
future. 

As  we  reflect  on  the  principle  which  here  gradu- 
ally becomes  visible,  its  full  meaning  grows,  in  time, 
upon  the  mind.  We  begin  to  see  in  perspective  the 
real  outlines  of  that  development  with  the  tendencies 
of  which  the  advanced  peoples  have  already  been 
struggling  for  the  greater  part  of  a  century.  Sooner 
or  later,  we  see,  the  general  will  must,  by  its  own 
determinative  act,  and  in  obedience  to  that  sense  of 
responsibility  inherent  in  our  civilisation,  and  trans- 
cending the  bounds  of  all  existing  interests  and  the 
limits  of  political  consciousness  itself,  project  the 
meaning  of  the  economic  process  beyond  the  content 
of  that  mere  free  fight  in  the  present  to  which  we 
see  it  now  confined.  It  is,  in  reality,  we  begin  to 
perceive,  nothing  more  than  the  dim  consciousness 
of  this  fact  that  has  consistently  inspired  that  move- 
ment of  opinion  which,  under  so  many  "forms,  has 
already  come  into  conflict  with  the  phenomena  of 
laissez-faire  competition  in  the  economic  process 
throughout  the  world.  This  has  been,  it  may  be  dis- 
tinguished, the  ultimate  meaning  of  that  instinct, 
however  wrongly  directed  it  may  have  been  in  its 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  471 

manifestations  in  the  past,  which  has  consistently 
insisted  that  it  is  only  through  the  aid  of  the  law  that 
unskilled  labour  can  ever  be  enfranchised  in  its  rela- 
tion to  capital.  This  has  been,  we  see,  the  meaning 
struggling  towards  expression  in  that  continual  ap- 
peal of  labour  to  society  to  recognise  its  right  to 
a  minimum  wage,  to  uphold  its  standards  of  life, 
and,  generally,  to  enforce  by  law  a  class  of  claims 
representing  in  the  last  analysis  nothing  more  than 
the  first  bare  conditions  of  free  competition  in  its 
relations  to  capital  on  the  one  hand  and  to  its  own 
kind  on  the  other. 

It  is  the  same  instinct  —  that  nothing  else  than 
the  general  will  consciously  acting  under  a  sense 
of  responsibility  to  principles  transcending  all  the 
claims  of  existing  competitors,  and  acting,  therefore, 
in  the  interests  of  the  process  of  our  social  evolution 
as  a  whole,  can  ever  hold  the  stage  open  and  free  in 
the  conditions  in  which  we  see  modern  industrial 
competition  tending  universally  towards  monopoly 
control  —  which  is  in  reality  behind  all  the  demands, 
however  crudely  formulated  as  yet,  that  tend  to 
bring  us  into  view  of  an  era  in  which  increments  in 
the  profit  ownership  of  the  instruments  and  mate- 
rials of  production  which  are  unearned  in  terms  of 
social  utility  shall  form  part  of  a  common  inheritance 
to  which  the  energies  and  abilities  of  the  individual 
shall  be  applied  in  conditions  tending  towards  equal 
economic  opportunity.  In  no  other  condition,  as  we 
begin  to  see,  can  that  characteristic  significance  of 
really  free  competition,  towards  which  it  has  been 
from  the  beginning  the  destiny  of  our  civilisation  to 
carry  the  world,  be  realised.  In  no  other  conditions 


472  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

can  the  controlling  meaning  of  the  economic  process 
in  relation  to  the  problems  of  modern  industry  ever 
be  projected  beyond  the  content  of  a  struggle, 
bounded  always  by  the  horizon  of  existing  interests  ; 
wherein  we  now  see  the  strongest  competitors,  sim- 
ply in  virtue  of  the  qualities  contributing  to  survival 
in  a  free  fight  in  the  present,  tending  to  become 
absolute  in  conditions  of  power  as  irresponsible  and 
of  monopoly  as  colossal  as  any  which  characterised 
the  civilisations  of  the  ancient  world. 

As  in  the  light  of  the  same  principle  the  mind  con- 
tinues to  look  along  the  horizon  where  the  present 
merges  into  the  future,  we  catch  sight  of  the  meaning 
of  that  still  deeper  instinct  with  which  it  may  be 
distinguished  that  all  the  peoples  representing  the 
advancing  life  of  our  civilisation  are  struggling  at  the 
present  time  —  that  instinct,  that  is  to  say,  which 
Schmoller  and  the  historical  school  in  economics 
imperfectly  endeavoured  to  express  under  the  con- 
ception of  nationality.  The  mistaken  conception  of 
the  Manchester  school,  that  the  progress  won  for  the 
race  could  be  maintained,  and  that  the  ideal  of  an 
open,  fair,  and  free  rivalry  under  which  all  human 
capacities  should  have  the  right  of  universal  oppor- 
tunity could  ever  be  realised  in  the  conditions  of  a 
process  of  competitive  trade,  regulated  of  necessity  at 
the  level  of  the  qualities  governing  an  international 
scramble  for  private  gain,  already  belongs  to  the 
immature  imaginings  of  a  period  beyond  which  the 
world  has  moved.  What  we  see  is  that  in  this  case 
also  the  principle  we  have  traced  throughout  as  repre- 
sented in  the  development  of  our  civilisation  must 
eventually  come  into  operation. 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  473 

In  other  words  :  —  //  is  only  within  tJie  great  spaces 
cleared  in  the  world-process  round  ideals  which  are  in 
the  last  resort  the  expression  of  the  ethical  principle  here 
enunciated,  and  which  are  held  open,  and  free  in  the 
present  by  an  irresistible  will  operating  in  obedience  to 
a  sense  of  responsibility  to  a  principle  of  tolerance  tran- 
scending the  claims  of  all  existing  interests,  that  the  con- 
trolling meaning  of  the  economic  process  can  ever  be  per- 
manently projected  out  of  the  present  on  the  world-stage. 

This  is  the  meaning  which  the  peoples  that  rep- 
resent certain  organised  phases  of  the  advancing  life 
of  our  civilisation  are  now  struggling  to  express,  in 
the  consciousness  of  a  collective  life  in  those  great 
ethical  ideals  which  are  tending  amongst  these  peoples 
to  take  the  place  of  those  represented  in  the  past  under 
the  concepts  of  nationality.  It  is  undoubtedly  amongst 
the  peoples  who  have  already  carried  farthest  the  char- 
acteristic principles  of  the  development  we  have  fol- 
lowed through  Western  history  since  the  beginning 
of  our  era,  that  the  cause  here  described  is  destined 
in  the  near  future  to  play  the  greatest  part  in  the 
world-process.  The  observer  can  have  little  insight 
into  the  tendencies  of  current  events  who  does  not 
perceive  that  amongst  the  advanced  peoples  at  the 
present  day  this  movement  of  the  developmental 
principles  of  our  civilisation  towards  consciousness,  is 
already  a  fact  in  Western  history,  the  significance  of 
which  overshadows  that  of  any  other  tendency  of  the 
time.  In  the  existing  territory  of  United  States  it  is, 
as  was  indicated  in  the  previous  chapter,  the  real  cause 
beneath  the  surface  which  has  built  up  the  group 
of  peoples  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  into  a  con- 
scious organic  unity,  which  has  enabled  that  unity 


4/4  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

to  absorb,  with  a  rapidity  and  completeness  of  which 
only  the  highest  organic  life  could  be  capable,  the 
millions  which  surrounded  them  and  which  have  been 
poured  upon  them.  It  is  the  cause  which  has  made 
the  United  States  the  largest  free-trading  area  in  the 
world;  and  which  in  this,  and  a  multitude  of  other 
respects,  constitutes  the  ultimate  fact  behind  those 
conditions  of  intensity,  and  that  outlook  on  the  world 
which  is  so  significant  for  the  future  of  this  section  of 
the  English-speaking  peoples.  Similarly  in  England 
at  the  present  day,  the  observer  can  have  gone  little 
beneath  the  surface-meaning  of  current  events,  who 
does  not  realise  in  the  same  cause  one  of  the  pro- 
foundest  nascent  forces  in  existing  politics.  It  is  the 
cause  behind  that  instinct  which  already  associates 
with  the  collective  life  of  that  loosely  federated  com- 
monwealth of  peoples,  incorrectly  known  as  the  Brit- 
ish empire,  a  sense  of  responsibility,  a  meaning  and  a 
destiny  in  the  future  —  in  upholding  throughout  the 
world  the  conditions  of  development,  and  the  stand- 
ards of  life  won  with  such  effort  in  our  civilisation  — 
the  significance  of  which  entirely  transcends  the  con- 
tent of  the  utilitarian  Liberalism  which  prevailed  in 
England  in  the  middle  decades  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  And  in  the  English-speaking  world  as  a 
whole  it  is  already  a  cause  from  which  proceeds  an 
impetus  of  which  no  mind  has  as  yet  either  measured 
the  reach  or  foreseen  the  destiny.  It  is  an  impetus, 
moreover,  which,  proceeding  from  a  cause  that  has  no 
relation  either  to  the  conditions  or  aims  of  current 
politics,  but  which,  going  deeper  than  all  outward 
forms  of  politics  and  of  governments,  has  its  seat  in 
the  growing  sense  of  organic  unity  amongst  this 


xi  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  4/5 

group  of  peoples  as  the  conscious  representatives  in 
history  of  the  principles  through  which  the  main 
stream  of  the  evolutionary  process  in  Western  history 
has  come  down  from  the  past  in  our  civilisation,  and 
is  descending  towards  the  future  in  the  world. 

When  the  adjustments  in  respect  of  natural  and 
legitimate  aspirations  that  have  not  been  satisfied  in 
the  past  have  been  made,  there  can,  in  short,  be  no 
doubt  as  to  the  nature  of  the  future  towards  which 
our  civilisation  is  drawing  in  this  respect.  The  day 
of  such  concepts  of  nationality,  as  express  merely  the 
tribal  or  local  egoisms  of  a  people,  would  appear  to  be 
over.  What  we  must  expect  to  see  in  the  future 
towards  which  we  are  moving,  is  the  life  of  the  world, 
under  the  lead  of  our  civilisation,  converging  gradu- 
ally towards  a  stage  at  which  the  rivalry  will  be 
between  a  few  great,  clearly  defined  systems  of  social 
order  ;  these  systems  being,  in  the  last  resort,  nothing 
more  or  less  than  different  outward  expressions,  in 
terms  of  the  social  and  economic  life  of  the  included 
peoples,  of  that  principle  of  the  subordination  of  the 
present  to  the  future  with  which  the  meaning  of  our 
civilisation  has  been  from  the  beginning  identified  in 
the  evolutionary  process.  '  And  in  the  eventual  world- 
rivalry  between  these  systems  the  determining  fac- 
tor of  success  will  undoubtedly  be  the  degree  of 
efficiency  with  which  this  principle  has  obtained 
expression  in  the  life-processes  of  the  included 
peoples. 

For  the  peoples  who  represent  the  advancing  front 
of  the  development  we  have  thus  traced  through 
Western  history,  and  amongst  whom  the  principle  of 
competition  has  already  produced  its  most  important 


476  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

results,  there  has  been  reached  a  period  in  which  it 
has  become  the  clear  duty  of  the  party  representing 
the  cause  of  progress  to  place  before  it  the  one  cen- 
tral principle  around  which  all  the  details  of  the  main 
conflict  in  the  local,  political,  social,  and  international 
life  of  our  civilisation  must  in  future  be  waged.  This 
is,  that  in  the  relations  of  the  individual  to  society  the 
conditions  which  express  the  ascendency  of  the  pres- 
ent in  the  economic  process  belong  to  an  epoch  of 
development  beyond  the  meaning  of  which  our  civili- 
sation must  be  considered  to  have  definitely  moved. 

The  fact  through  which  the  ascendency  of  the 
present  continues  to  express  itself  in  the  economic 
process  is  everywhere  the  same.  We  have  it  in  view 
under  the  phenomenon  of  the  legalised  enforcement, 
whether  by  individuals,  or  classes,  or  corporations, 
or  sometimes  even  by  whole  peoples,  of  rights  which 
do  not  correspond  to  an  equivalent  in  social  utility. 
This  is  the  phenomenon  which  John  Stuart  Mill  and 
the  English  Utilitarians  had  in  view  in  their  early 
attack  on  the  institution  of  unearned  increments. 
This  is  the  phenomenon  which,  in  the  last  analysis, 
we  see  Henry  George  endeavouring  to  combat  in  his 
denouncement  of  the  monopoly  ownership  of  natural 
utilities.  This  is  the  phenomenon  with  which  we  see 
Marx  struggling  in  his  theory  of  surplus  value,  so  far 
as  it  is  true  —  the  phenomenon,  that  is  to  say,  of  the 
acquirement  by  capital  of  values  in  the  produce  of 
labour  which  represent  monopoly  rights  not  earned 
by  capital  in  terms  of  function.  It  is  the  phenome- 
non we  have  in  view  in  that  class  of  fortunes  accumu- 
lated in  stock  exchange  values  which  have  not  been 
earned  in  terms  of  function.  It  is  the  fact  underlying 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  477 

every  form  of  private  right  accruing  from  increase, 
unearned  in  terms  of  social  utility,  in  the  profit  own- 
ership of  the  instruments  and  materials  of  production. 
It  is  the  phenomenon  we  have  in  view  in  the  now 
universal  tendency  in  modern  industry  to  monopoly 
ownership,  or  its  equivalent  in  monopoly  control ; 
with  the  resulting  accumulation  of  vast  private  for- 
tunes through  the  enforced  disadvantage  of  classes, 
of  whole  communities,  and  even  of  entire  nations. 
It  is  the  fact  underlying  every  form  of  the  exploita- 
tion of  a  less  developed  people,  whether  by  special 
tariffs  or  otherwise,  by  a  ruling  race  for  its  own  pri- 
vate advantage.  And  last  of  all,  it  is  the  phenomenon 
which  meets  us  in  its  final  colossal  phase  in  the  inter- 
national world-process,  under  the  tendency  of  aggre- 
gates of  capital,  in  an  uncontrolled  and  irresponsible 
scramble  for  profit  governed  in  the  last  resort  sim- 
ply by  the  qualities  contributing  to  success  and  sur- 
vival in  a  free  fight  for  private  gain,  to  control  the 
general  exploitation  of  the  natural  resources  of  the 
world  at  the  level  of  its  lowest  standards  in  human 
life  and  human  labour. 

These  are  all  but  differing  expressions  of  a  single 
world-embracing  fact  —  the  ascendency  of  the  pres- 
ent in  the  economic  process  in  our  time.  It  has  been 
the  conflict  in  which  this  ascendency  of  the  present 
in  the  evolutionary  process  has  been  challenged, 
shaken,  and  overthrown  in  the  developments  of 
thought  and  action  that  have  led  up  to  the  struggle 
now  before  us,  which  has  formed  the  central  theme 
in  the  history  of  the  process  of  development  we  have 
traced  so  far  through  our  civilisation.  Upon  the 
party  representing  the  cause  of  progress  in  Western 


478  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

history  has  now  devolved  the  task  of  lifting  this  con- 
flict to  a  higher  stage  than  any  it  has  yet  reached  — 
of  carrying  it  into  the  arena  of  the  economic  process 
in  all  its  manifestations  throughout  the  world.  Never 
before  has  that  party  had  set  before  it  a  cause  more 
calculated  to  inspire  its  inward  faith,  and  to  call  forth 
all  the  qualities  of  a  stern,  controlled,  centralised  and 
disciplined  enthusiasm.  Behind  the  struggle  towards 
which  we  have  advanced  lies  all  the  impetus  of  past 
development  in  our  civilisation,  all  the  meaning  in- 
herent in  that  civilisation  from  the  beginning  of  our 
era.  The  gradual  organisation  and  direction  through 
the  State,  under  the  sense  of  responsibility  here  de- 
fined, of  the  activities  of  industry  and  production, 
moving  slowly,  not  to  any  fixed  condition  of  ordered 
ease,  but  towards  an  era  of  such  free  and  efficient 
conflict  of  all  natural  forces  as  has  never  been  in  the 
world  before,  is  no  dream  of  excited  imaginations. 
Divested  of  all  the  cruder  proposals  of  confiscation 
and  of  the  regimentation  of  society,  divorced  from 
the  threats  and  not  unnatural  exaggerations  of  classes 
wronged  and  oppressed  in  the  past,  it  is  no  more  than 
a  simple  and  sober  reality  of  the  future,  which  must, 
by  necessity  inherent  in  the  evolutionary  process, 
ultimately  prevail  amongst  the  winning  peoples.  It 
is  the  goal  which  has  been  inherent  from  the  begin- 
ning in  that  organic  process  of  development,  the  steps 
in  the  unfolding  of  which  in  our  Western  civilisation 
we  have  endeavoured  to  describe.  It  represents  the 
only  effective  condition  in  which  the  future  can  ever 
be  emancipated  in  the  present  in  human  society. 

No  mind  in  our  civilisation  has,  in  all  probability, 
as  yet  imagined  the  full  possibilities  of  the  collective 


XI  TOWARDS  THE  FUTURE  479 

organisation  —  under  the  direction  of  a  highly  central- 
ised and  informed  intelligence,  acting  under  the  sense 
of  responsibility  here  described  —  of  all  the  activities 
of  industry  and  production,  moving  steadily  towards 
the  goal  of  the  endowment  of  all  human  capacities  in 
a  free  conflict  of  forces.  It  is  only  necessary  for  the 
observer  who  has  once  grasped  the  meaning  of  the 
development  described  in  the  preceding  chapters  to 
stand  at  almost  any  point  in  the  life  of  the  English- 
speaking  world  of  the  present  day  to  realise  how  far 
society  has,  in  reality,  moved  beyond  that  conception 
of  its  joint  effort  which  prevailed  in  the  early  period 
of  the  competitive  era  —  the  conception  of  the  State 
as  an  irresponsible  and  almost  brainless  Colossus, 
organised  primarily  towards  the  end  of  securing  men 
in  possession  of  the  gains  they  had  obtained  in  an 
uncontrolled  scramble  for  gain  divorced  from  all  sense 
of  responsibility. 

Nevertheless,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  peo- 
ples who  have  lived  through  this  phase  of  the  com- 
petitive process,  and  amongst  whom  such  competition 
as  has  prevailed  has  achieved  the  highest  results,  will 
start  towards  the  new  era  with  a  great  advantage  in 
their  favour.  For  it  must  be  expected  that  where  the 
development  in  progress  continues  to  be  efficiently 
maintained,  the  new  system  will  succeed  the  old,  not 
by  force  or  coercion,  but  by  its  own  merits  ;  and,  in 
conditions  in  which  it  will  become  the  increasing 
function  of  an  informed  and  centralised  system  of 
public  opinion  to  hold  continually  before  the  general 
mind  through  all  the  phases  of  public  activity  —  local, 
social,  political,  and  international  —  the  character  of 
the  principles  governing  the  epoch  of  development  on 


480  WESTERN  CIVILISATION  CHAP. 

which  we  have  entered ;  and  to  see  that  the  benefits  ac- 
cruing from  the  era  of  competition  through  which  we 
have  lived  shall  be  retained  and  increased  for  society 
by  compelling  the  new  social  order  to  make  its  way 
simply  on  its  merits  in  free  and  fair  rivalry  with  those 
activities  of  private  effort  which  it  is  destined  to 
supersede. 

The  enfranchisement  of  the  future  in  a  develop- 
ment in  which  the  race  is  passing  slowly  under  the 
control  of  the  principles  governing  a  process  infinite 
in  the  future  is  a  principle  before  which  all  others 
must  eventually  go  down  in  the  process  of  human 
progress.  It  is  the  principle  with  which  the  poten- 
tiality of  our  civilisation  has  been  associated  from 
the  beginning.  It  is  the  characteristic  principle  with 
which  the  advance  of  the  peoples  destined  to  main- 
tain a  leading  place  in  that  civilisation  must  continue 
to  be  identified.  No  human  foresight  could,  even  at 
a  period  recent  in  history,  have  predicted,  without 
insight  into  such  a  cause,  the  world-embracing  future 
to  which,  irrespective  of  race,  position,  population, 
wealth,  or  natural  resources,  the  action  of  this  prin- 
ciple was  about  to  raise  in  a  comparatively  brief 
period  of  time  the  small  group  of  English-speaking 
peoples,  otherwise  so  insignificant  a  component  in 
our  Western  civilisation.  So  now  all  attempts  to 
judge  the  future  by  any  precedents  drawn  from  the 
past,  or  by  any  comparisons  whatever  with  standards 
which  the  world  has  known  before,  are  entirely  vain 
and  meaningless.  In  the  ancient  civilisations  the 
universal  empire  towards  which  the  world  had  moved 
throughout  unknown  periods  in  the  past  had  one 
meaning  which  controlled  all  others.  It  represented 


XI  TOWARDS  THE   FUTURE  481 

the  culminating  fact  of  the  ascendency  of  the  present 
in  the  process  of  human  evolution.  The  universal 
empire  towards  which  our  civilisation  moves  —  that 
universal  empire  the  principles  of  which  have  obtained 
their  first  firm  foothold  in  human  history  in  that 
stupendous,  complex,  and  long-drawn-out  conflict  of 
which  the  history  of  the  English-speaking  peoples 
has  been  the  principal  theatre  in  modern  history  — 
has  a  meaning  which  transcends  this.  It  represents 
that  empire  in  which  it  has  become  the  destiny  of  our 
Western  Demos,  in  full  consciousness  of  the  nature 
of  the  majestic  process  of  cosmic  ethics  that  has 
engendered  him,  to  project  the  controlling  meaning 
of  the  world-process  beyond  the  present.  All  the 
developments  that  have  hitherto  taken  place  in  our 
civilisation  are  but  the  steps  leading  up  to  the  gigan- 
tic struggle  now  closing  in  upon  us,  as  the  ruling 
principle  of  a  past  era  of  human  evolution  moves 
slowly  towards  its  challenge  in  the  economic  process 
in  all  its  manifestations  throughout  the  world. 


21 


APPENDIX 

CONTAINING  CERTAIN  HISTORICAL  DOCUMENTS 
REFERRED  TO  IN  THE  PRECEDING  CHAP- 
TERS, OR  BEARING  ON  SUBJECTS  DISCUSSED 

i.   ORDINANCE  OF  WILLIAM  I.  OF  ENGLAND  SEPARATING  THE 
SPIRITUAL  AND  TEMPORAL  COURTS 

William  by  the  grace  of  God  king  of  the  English,  to  R. 
Bainard  and  G.  de  Magnavilla,  and  P.  de  Valoines,  and  to 
my  other  faithful  ones  of  Essex  and  of  Hertfordshire  and  of 
Middlesex,  greeting.  Know  all  of  you  and  my  other  faithful 
ones  who  remain  in  England,  that  in  a  common  council  and 
by  the  advice  of  the  archbishops  and  bishops,  and  abbots, 
and  of  all  the  princes  of  my  kingdom,  I  have  decided  that 
the  episcopal  laws,  which  up  to  my  time  in  the  kingdom  of 
the  English  have  not  been  right  or  according  to  the  precepts 
of  the  holy  canons,  shall  be  emended.  Wherefore  I  com- 
mand, and  by  royal  authority  decree,  that  no  bishop  or  arch- 
deacon shall  any  longer  hold,  in  the  hundred  court,  pleas 
pertaining  to  the  episcopal  laws,  nor  shall  they  bring  before 
the  judgment  of  secular  men  any  case  which  pertains  to  the 
rule  of  souls  ;  but  whoever  shall  be  summoned,  according  to 
the  episcopal  laws,  in  any  case  or  for  any  fault,  shall  come 
to  the  place  which  the  bishop  shall  choose  or  name  for  this 
purpose,  and  shall  there  answer  in  his  case  or  for  his  fault, 
and  shall  perform  his  law  before  God  and  his  bishop  not 
according  to  the  hundred  court,  but  according  to  the  canons 
and  the  episcopal  laws.  But  if  any  one,  elated  by  pride,  shall 
scorn  or  be  unwilling  to  come  before  the  judgment  seat  of 
the  bishop,  he  shall  be  summoned  once  and  a  second  and  a 
third  time  ;  and  if  not  even  then  he  come  to  make  amends, 
he  shall  be  excommunicated  ;  and,  if  it  be  needful  to  give 

483 


484  APPENDIX 

effect  to  this,  the  power  and  justice  of  the  king  or  the  sheriff 
shall  be  called  in.  But  he  who  was  summoned  before  the 
judgment  seat  of  the  bishop  shall,  for  each  summons,  pay 
the  episcopal  fine.  This  also  I  forbid,  and  by  my  authority 
interdict,  that  any  sheriff,  or  prevost,  or  minister  of  the  king, 
or  any  layman,  concern  himself  in  the  matter  of  laws  which 
pertain  to  the  bishop,  nor  shall  any  layman  summon  another 
man  to  judgment  apart  from  the  jurisdiction  of  the  bishop. 
But  judgment  shall  be  passed  in  no  place  except  within  the 
episcopal  see,  or  in  such  place  as  the  bishop  shall  fix  upon 
for  this  purpose. 

2-3.    THE  DISPUTE  BETWEEN  THE  EMPERORS  AND  THE 
POPES 

(2,  3,  4  and  5  are  reprinted  by  permission  from  Dr.  Henderson's  text  in 
Select  Historical  Documents  of  the  Middle  Ages.~) 

2.  Henry  IV? s  Answer  to  Gregory  VII.,  Jan.  24,  1076 

Henry,  king  not  through  usurpation,  but  through  the  holy 
ordination  of  God,  to  Hildebrand,  at  present  not  pope  but 
false  monk.  Such  greeting  as  this  hast  thou  merited  through 
thy  disturbances,  inasmuch  as  there  is  no  grade  in  the  church 
which  thou  hast  omitted  to  make  a  partaker  not  of  honour 
but  of  confusion,  not  of  benediction  but  of  malediction.  For, 
to  mention  few  and  especial  cases  out  of  many,  not  only  hast 
thou  not  feared  to  lay  hands  upon  the  rulers  of  the  holy 
church,  the  anointed  of  the  Lord  —  the  archbishops,  namely, 
bishops  and  priests  —  but  thou  hast  trodden  them  under  foot 
like  slaves  ignorant  of  what  their  master  is  doing.  Thou  hast 
won  favour  from  the  common  herd  by  crushing  them  ;  thou 
hast  looked  upon  all  of  them  as  knowing  nothing,  upon  thy 
sole  self,  moreover,  as  knowing  all  things.  This  knowledge, 
however,  thou  hast  used  not  for  edification  but  for  destruc- 
tion ;  so  that  with  reason  we  believe  that  St.  Gregory,  whose 
name  thou  hast  usurped  for  thyself,  was  prophesying  con- 
cerning thee  when  he  said :  "  The  pride  of  him  who  is  in 
power  increases  the  more  the  greater  the  number  of  those 
subject  to  him  ;  and  he  thinks  that  he  himself  can  do  more 


APPENDIX  485 

than  all."  And  we,  indeed,  have  endured  all  this,  being 
eager  to  guard  the  honour  of  the  apostolic  see ;  thou,  how- 
ever, hast  understood  our  humility  to  be  fear,  and  hast  not, 
accordingly,  shunned  to  rise  up  against  the  royal  power  con- 
ferred upon  us  by  God,  daring  to  threaten  to  divest  us  of  it. 
As  if  we  had  received  our  kingdom  from  thee  !  As  if  the 
kingdom  and  the  empire  were  in  thine  and  not  in  God's 
hand  !  And  this  although  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  did  call  us 
to  the  kingdom,  did  not,  however,  call  thee  to  the  priest- 
hood. For  thou  hast  ascended  by  the  following  steps.  By 
wiles,  namely,  which  the  profession  of  monk  abhors,  thou 
hast  achieved  money ;  by  money,  favour ;  by  the  sword,  the 
throne  of  peace.  And  from  the  throne  of  peace  thou  hast 
disturbed  peace,  inasmuch  as  thou  hast  armed  subjects  against 
those  in  authority  over  them  ;  inasmuch  as  thou,  who  wert 
not  called,  hast  taught  that  our  bishops  called  of  God  are  to 
be  despised  ;  inasmuch  as  thou  hast  usurped  for  laymen  the 
ministry  over  their  priests,  allowing  them  to  depose  or  con- 
demn those  whom  they  themselves  had  received  as  teachers 
from  the  hand  of  God  through  the  laying  on  of  hands  of  the 
bishops.  On  me  also  who,  although  unworthy  to  be  among 
the  anointed,  have  nevertheless  been  anointed  to  the  king- 
dom, thou  hast  lain  thy  hand  ;  me  who  —  as  the  tradition  of 
the  holy  Fathers  teaches,  declaring  that  I  am  not  to  be  de- 
posed for  any  crime  unless,  which  God  forbid,  I  should  have 
strayed  from  the  faith  —  am  subject  to  the  judgment  of  God 
alone.  For  the  wisdom  of  the  holy  Fathers  committed  even 
Julian  the  apostate  not  to  themselves,  but  to  God  alone,  to 
be  judged  and  to  be  deposed.  For  himself  the  true  pope, 
Peter,  also  exclaims :  "  Fear  God,  honour  the  king."  But 
thou,  who  dost  not  fear  God,  dost  dishonour  in  me  his  ap- 
pointed one.  Wherefore  St.  Paul,  when  he  has  not  spared 
an  angel  of  heaven  if  he  shall  have  preached  otherwise,  has 
not  excepted  thee  also  who  dost  teach  otherwise  upon  earth. 
For  he  says  :  "  If  any  one,  either  I  or  an  angel  from  heaven, 
should  preach  a  gospel  other  than  that  which  has  been 
preached  to  you,  he  shall  be  damned.  Thou,  therefore, 
damned  by  this  curse  and  by  the  judgment  of  all  our  bishops 


486  APPENDIX 

and  by  our  own,  descend  and  relinquish  the  apostolic  chair 
which  thou  hast  usurped.  Let  another  ascend  the  throne  of 
St.  Peter,  who  shall  not  practise  violence  under  the  cloak  of 
religion,  but  shall  teach  the  sound  doctrine  of  St.  Peter.  I 
Henry,  king  by  the  grace  of  God,  do  say  unto  thee,  together 
with  all  our  bishops :  Descend,  descend,  to  be  damned 
throughout  the  ages. 

3.   First  Deposition  and  Banning  of  Henry  IV.  by 
Gregory   VIL,  February  22,  1076 

O  St.  Peter,  chief  of  the  apostles,  incline  to  us,  I  beg, 
thy  holy  ears,  and  hear  me  thy  servant  whom  thou  hast 
nourished  from  infancy,  and  whom,  until  this  day,  thou  hast 
freed  from  the  hand  of  the  wicked,  who  have  hated  and  do 
hate  rne  for  my  faithfulness  to  thee.  Thou,  and  my  mis- 
tress the  mother  of  God,  and  thy  brother  St.  Paul,  are  wit- 
nesses for  me  among  all  the  saints  that  thy  holy  Roman 
church  drew  me  to  its  helm  against  my  will ;  that  I  had  no 
thought  of  ascending  thy  chair  through  force,  and  that  I 
would  rather  have  ended  my  life  as  a  pilgrim  than,  by  secu- 
lar means,  to  have  seized  thy  throne  for  the  sake  of  earthly 
glory.  And  therefore  I  believe  it  to  be  through  thy  grace, 
and  not  through  my  own  deeds,  that  it  has  pleased  and  does 
please  thee  that  the  Christian  people,  who  have  been  espe- 
cially committed  to  thee,  should  obey  me.  And  especially 
to  me,  as  thy  representative  and  by  thy  favour,  has  the  power 
been  granted  by  God  of  binding  and  loosing  in  heaven  and 
on  earth.  On  the  strength  of  this  belief,  therefore,  for  the 
honour  and  security  of  thy  church,  in  the  name  of  Almighty 
God,  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  I  withdraw,  through  thy 
power  and  authority,  from  Henry  the  king,  son  of  Henry  the 
emperor,  who  has  risen  against  thy  church  with  unheard  of 
insolence,  the  rule  over  the  whole  kingdom  of  the  Germans 
and  over  Italy.  And  I  absolve  all  Christians  from  the  bonds 
of  the  oath  which  they  have  made  or  shall  make  to  him ; 
and  I  forbid  any  one  to  serve  him  as  king.  For  it  is  fitting 
that  he  who  strives  to  lessen  the  honour  of  thy  church  should 


APPENDIX  487 

himself  lose  the  honour  which  belongs  to  him.  And  since 
he  has  scorned  to  obey  as  a  Christian,  and  has  not  returned 
to  God  whom  he  had  deserted  —  holding  intercourse  with 
the  excommunicated  ;  practising  manifold  iniquities  ;  spurn- 
ing my  commands  which,  as  thou  dost  bear  witness,  I  issued 
to  him  for  his  own  salvation  ;  separating  himself  from  thy 
church,  and  striving  to  rend  it ;  —  I  bind  him  in  thy  stead 
with  the  chain  of  the  anathema.  And,  leaning  on  thee,  I 
so  bind  him  that  the  people  may  know  and  have  proof  that 
thou  art  Peter,  and  above  thy  rock  the  Son  of  the  living 
God  hath  built  His  church,  and  the  gates  of  hell  shall  not 
prevail  against  it. 

4.  THE  BULL  "CLERICIS  LAICOS,"    1296  A.D. 

(Rymer's  Foedera,  ed.  1816,  vol.  i.  pt.  ii.  p.  836.) 

Bishop  Boniface,  servant  of  the  servants  of  God,  in  per- 
petual memory  of  this  matter.  Antiquity  teaches  us  that 
laymen  are  in  a  high  degree  hostile  to  the  clergy,  a  fact 
which  also  the  experiences  of  the  present  times  declare  and 
make  manifest ;  inasmuch  as,  not  content  within  their  own 
bounds,  they  strive  after  what  is  forbidden,  and  loose  the 
reins  in  pursuit  of  what  is  unlawful.  Nor  have  they  the  pru- 
dence to  consider  that  all  jurisdiction  is  denied  them  over  the 
clergy  —  over  both  the  persons  and  the  goods  of  ecclesiastics. 
On  the  prelates  of  the  churches  and  on  ecclesiastical  persons, 
monastic  and  secular,  they  impose  heavy  burdens,  tax  them, 
and  declare  levies  upon  them.  They  exact  and  extort  from 
them  the  half,  the  tenth  or  twentieth  or  some  other  portion 
or  quota  of  their  revenues  or  of  their  goods ;  and  they 
attempt  in  many  ways  to  subject  them  to  slavery  and  reduce 
them  to  their  sway.  And,  with  grief  do  we  mention  it,  some 
prelates  of  the  churches  and  ecclesiastical  persons,  fearing 
where  they  ought  not  to  fear,  seeking  a  transitory  peace, 
dreading  more  to  offend  the  temporal  than  the  eternal 
majesty,  without  obtaining  the  authority  or  permission  of 
the  apostolic  chair,  do  acquiesce,  not  so  much  rashly,  as 
improvidently,  in  the  abuses  of  such  persons.  We,  therefore, 


488  APPENDIX 

wishing  to  put  a  stop  to  such  iniquitous  acts,  by  the  counsel 
of  our  brothers,  of  the  apostolic  authority,  have  decreed : 
that  whatever  prelates,  or  ecclesiastical  persons,  monastic  or 
secular,  of  whatever  grade,  condition  or  standing,  shall  pay, 
or  promise,  or  agree  to  pay  as  levies  or  talliages  to  laymen 
the  tenth,  twentieth,  or  hundredth  part  of  their  own  and 
their  churches'  revenues  or  goods  —  or  any  other  quantity, 
portion,  or  quota  of  those  same  revenues  or  goods,  of  their 
estimated  or  of  their  real  value  —  under  the  name  of  an 
aid,  loan,  subvention,  subsidy  or  gift,  or  under  any  other 
name,  manner  or  clever  pretence,  without  the  authority  of 
that  same  chair  :  likewise  emperors,  kings,  or  princes,  dukes, 
counts  or  barons,  podestas,  captains  or  officials  or  rectors  — 
by  whatever  name  they  are  called,  whether  of  cities,  castles, 
or  any  places  whatever,  wherever  situated ;  and  any  other 
persons,  of  whatever  pre-eminence,  condition,  or  standing 
who  shall  impose,  exact,  or  receive  such  payments,  or  shall 
anywhere  arrest,  seize  or  presume  to  take  possession  of  the 
belongings  of  churches  or  ecclesiastical  persons  which  are 
deposited  in  the  sacred  buildings,  or  shall  order  them  to  be 
arrested,  seized  or  taken  possession  of,  or  shall  receive  them 
when  taken  possession  of,  seized  or  arrested  ;  —  also  all  who 
shall  knowingly  give  aid,  counsel,  or  favour  in  the  aforesaid 
things,  whether  publicly  or  secretly ;  —  shall  incur,  by  the  act 
itself,  the  sentence  of  excommunication.  Corporations,  more- 
over, which  shall  be  guilty  in  these  matters,  we  place  under  the 
ecclesiastical  interdict.  The  prelates  and  above  mentioned 
ecclesiastical  persons  we  strictly  command,  by  virtue  of  their 
obedience  and  under  penalty  of  deposition,  that  they  by  no 
means  acquiesce  in  such  demands,  without  express  permis- 
sion of  the  aforesaid  chair ;  and  that  they  pay  nothing  under 
pretext  of  any  obligation,  promise  and  confession  made 
hitherto,  or  to  be  made  hereafter  before  such  constitution, 
notice  or  decree  shall  come  to  their  notice ;  nor  shall  the 
aforesaid  secular  persons  in  any  way  receive  anything.  And 
if  they  shall  pay,  or  if  the  aforesaid  persons  shall  receive, 
they  shall  fall  by  the  the  act  itself  under  sentence  of  excom- 
munication. From  the  aforesaid  sentences  of  excommunica- 


APPENDIX  489 

tion  and  interdict,  moreover,  no  one  shall  be  able  to  be 
absolved,  except  in  the  throes  of  death,  without  the  authority 
and  special  permission  of  the  apostolic  chair ;  since  it  is  our 
intention  by  no  means  to  pass  over  with  dissimulation  so 
horrid  an  abuse  of  the  secular  powers.  Notwithstanding  any 
privileges  whatever  —  under  whatever  tenor,  form,  or  manner 
or  conception  of  words  —  that  have  been  granted  to  emperors, 
kings,  and  other  persons  mentioned  above  ;  as  to  which 
privileges  we  will  that,  against  what  we  have  here  laid  down, 
they  in  no  wise  avail  any  person  or  persons.  Let  no  man 
at  all,  then,  infringe  this  page  of  our  constitution,  prohibition 
or  decree,  or,  with  rash  daring,  act  counter  to  it ;  but  if  any 
one  shall  presume  to  attempt  this,  he  shall  know  that  he  is 
about  to  incur  the  indignation  of  Almighty  God  and  of  His 
blessed  apostles  Peter  and  Paul. 

Given  at  Rome  at  St.  Peter's  on  the  sixth  day  before  the 
Calends  of  March  (Feb.  25),  in  the  second  year  of  our 
pontificate. 

5.  THE  BULL  "UNAM  SANCTAM  " 

(From  the  latest  revision  of  the  text  in  Revue  des  Questions 
historiques,  July  1889,  p.  255.) 

We  are  compelled,  our  faith  urging  us,  to  believe  and  to 
hold  —  and  we  do  firmly  believe  and  simply  confess — that 
there  is  one  holy  catholic  and  apostolic  church,  outside  of 
which  there  is  neither  salvation  nor  remission  of  sins ;  her 
Spouse  proclaiming  it  in  the  Canticles  :  "  My  dove,  my  un- 
defiled  is  but  one,  she  is  the  choice  one  of  her  that  bare 
her ; "  which  represents  one  mystic  body,  of  which  body 
the  head  is  Christ;  but  of  Christ,  God.  In  this  church 
there  is  one  Lord,  one  faith  and  one  baptism.  There  was 
one  ark  of  Noah,  indeed,  at  the  time  of  the  flood,  symbol- 
ising one  church  ;  and  this  being  finished  in  one  cubit  had, 
namely,  one  Noah  as  helmsman  and  commander.  And, 
with  the  exception  of  this  ark,  all  things  existing  upon  the 
earth  were,  as  we  read,  destroyed.  This  church,  moreover, 
we  venerate  as  the  only  one,  the  Lord  saying  through  His 
prophet :  "  Deliver  my  soul  from  the  sword,  my  darling  from 


490  APPENDIX 

the  power  of  the  dog."  He  prayed  at  the  same  time  for 
His  soul  —  that  is,  for  Himself  the  head  —  and  for  His 
body,  —  which  body,  namely,  he  called  the  one  and  only 
church  on  account  of  the  unity  of  the  faith  promised,  of 
the  sacraments,  and  of  the  love  of  the  church.  She  is  that 
seamless  garment  of  the  Lord  which  was  not  cut 'but  which 
fell  by  lot.  Therefore  of  this  one  and  only  church  there  is 
one  body  and  one  head  —  not  two  heads  as  if  it  were  a 
monster  :  —  Christ,  namely,  and  the  vicar  of  Christ,  St. 
Peter,  and  the  successor  of  Peter.  For  the  Lord  Himself 
said  to  Peter,  Feed  my  sheep.  My  sheep,  He  said,  using  a 
general  term,  and  not  designating  these  or  those  particular 
sheep;  from  which  it  is  plain  that  He  committed  to  him  all 
His  sheep.  If,  then,  the  Greeks  or  others  say  that  they 
were  not  committed  to  the  care  of  Peter  and  his  successors, 
they  necessarily  confess  that  they  are  not  of  the  sheep  of 
Christ;  for  the  Lord  says,  in  John,  that  there  is  one  fold, 
one  shepherd,  and  one  only.  We  are  told  by  the  word  of 
the  gospel  that  in  this  His  fold  there  are  two  swords,  —  a 
spiritual,  namely,  and  a  temporal.  For  when  the  apostles 
said  "Behold  here  are  two  swords  "  —  when,  namely,  the 
apostles  were  speaking  in  the  church  —  the  Lord  did  not 
reply  that  this  was  too  much,  but  enough.  Surely  he  who 
denies  that  the  temporal  sword  is  in  the  power  of  Peter 
wrongly  interprets  the  word  of  the  Lord  when  he  says : 
"  Put  up  thy  sword  in  its  scabbard."  Both  swords,  the 
spiritual  and  the  material,  therefore,  are  in  the  power  of  the 
church ;  the  one,  indeed,  to  be  wielded  for  the  church, 
the  other  by  the  church ;  the  one  by  the  hand  of  the  priest, 
the  other  by  the  hand  of  kings  and  knights,  but  at  the  will 
and  sufferance  of  the  priest.  One  sword,  moreover,  ought 
to  be  under  the  other,  and  the  temporal  authority  to  be  sub- 
jected to  the  spiritual.  For  when  the  apostle  says  "  there  is 
no  power  but  of  God,  and  the  powers  that  are  of  God  are 
ordained,"  they  would  not  be  ordained  unless  sword  were 
under  sword,  and  the  lesser  one,  as  it  were,  were  led  by  the 
other  to  great  deeds.  For,  according  to  St.  Dionysius  the 
law  of  divinity  is  to  lead  the  lowest  through  the  intermediate 


APPENDIX  491 

to  the  highest  things.  Not  therefore,  according  to  the  law 
of  the  universe,  are  all  things  reduced  to  order  equally  and 
immediately ;  but  the  lowest  through  the  intermediate,  the 
intermediate  through  the  higher.  But  that  the  spiritual 
exceeds  any  earthly  power  in  dignity  and  nobility  we  ought 
the  more  openly  to  confess  the  more  spiritual  things  excel 
temporal  ones.  This  also  is  made  plain  to  our  eyes  from 
the  giving  of  tithes,  and  the  benediction  and  the  sanctifica- 
tion ;  from  the  acceptation  of  this  same  power,  from  the 
control  over  those  same  things.  For,  the  truth  bearing  wit- 
ness, the  spiritual  power  has  to  establish  the  earthly  power, 
and  to  judge  if  it  be  not  good.  Thus  concerning  the  church 
and  the  ecclesiastical  power  is  verified  the  prophecy  of  Jere- 
miah :  "  See,  I  have  this  day  set  thee  over  the  nations  and 
over  the  kingdoms,"  and  the  other  things  which  follow. 
Therefore  if  the  earthly  power  err  it  shall  be  judged  by  the 
spiritual  power ;  but  if  the  lesser  spiritual  power  err,  by  the 
greater.  But  if  the  greatest,  it  can  be  judged  by  God  alone, 
not  by  man,  the  apostle  bearing  witness.  A  spiritual  man 
judges  all  things,  but  he  himself  is  judged  by  no  one.  This 
authority,  moreover,  even  though  it  is  given  to  man  and 
exercised  through  man,  is  not  human,  but  rather  divine, 
being  given  by  divine  lips  to  Peter  and  founded  on  a  rock 
for  him  and  his  successors  through  Christ  himself  whom  he 
has  confessed  ;  the  Lord  himself  saying  to  Peter  :  "  What- 
soever thou  shall  bind,"  etc.  Whoever,  therefore,  resists 
this  power  thus  ordained  by  God,  resists  the  ordination  of 
God,  unless  he  makes  believe,  like  the  Manichean,  that  there 
are  two  beginnings.  This  we  consider  false  and  heretical, 
since  by  the  testimony  of  Moses,  not  "  in  the  beginnings," 
but  "  in  the  beginning  "  God  created  the  Heavens  and  the 
earth.  Indeed  we  declare,  announce  and  define,  that  it  is 
altogether  necessary  to  salvation  for  every  human  creature 
to  be  subject  to  the  Roman  pontiff.  The  I^ateran,  Nov.  14, 
in  our  8th  year.  As  a  perpetual  memorial  of  this  matter. 


492  APPENDIX 

6.  THE  AGREEMENT  OF  THE  PEOPLE 
(As  presented  to  the  House  of  Commons,  January  20,  1649.) 

(The  text  below  follows  that  in  Mr.  S.  R.  Gardiner's  Constitutional 
Documents  of  the  Puritan  Revolution.') 

An  Agreement  of  the  People  of  England,  and  the  places 
therewith  incorporated,  for  a  secure  and  present  peace, 
upon  grounds  of  common  right,  freedom,  and  safety. 

Having,  by  our  late  labours  and  hazards,  made  it  appear 
to  the  world  at  how  high  a  rate  we  value  our  just  freedom, 
and  God  having  so  far  owned  our  cause  as  to  deliver  the 
enemies  thereof  into  our  hands,  we  do  now  hold  ourselves 
bound,  in  mutual  duty  to  each  other,  to  take  the  best  care 
we  can  for  the  future,  to  avoid  both  the  danger  of  returning 
into  a  slavish  condition  and  the  chargeable  remedy  of 
another  war ;  for  as  it  cannot  be  imagined  that  so  many  of 
our  countrymen  would  have  opposed  us  in  this  quarrel  if 
they  had  understood  their  own  good,  so  may  we  hopefully 
promise  to  ourselves,  that  when  our  common  rights  and  lib- 
erties shall  be  cleared,  their  endeavours  will  be  disappointed 
that  seek  to  make  themselves  our  masters.  Since,  therefore, 
our  former  oppressions  and  not-yet-ended  troubles  have  been 
occasioned  either  by  want  of  frequent  national  meetings  in 
council,  or  by  the  undue  or  unequal  constitution  thereof,  or 
by  rendering  those  meetings  ineffectual,  we  are  fully  agreed 
and  resolved,  God  willing,  to  provide,  that  hereafter  our 
Representatives  be  neither  left  to  an  uncertainty  for  times 
nor  be  unequally  constituted,  nor  made  useless  to  the  ends 
for  which  they  are  intended.  In  order  whereunto  we  declare 
and  agree, 

First,  that  to  prevent  the  many  inconveniences  appar- 
ently arising  from  the  long  continuance  of  the  same  persons 
in  supreme  authority,  this  present  Parliament  end  and  dis- 
solve upon,  or  before,  the  last  day  of  April  1649. 

Secondly,  that  the  people  of  England  (being  at  this  day 
very  unequally  distributed  by  counties,  cities,  and  boroughs, 
for  the  election  of  their  Representatives)  be  indifferently  pro- 


APPENDIX  493 

portioned ;  and,  to  this  end,  that  the  Representatives  of  the 
whole  nation  shall  consist  of  400  persons,  or  not  above  ;  and 
in  each  county,  and  the  places  thereto  subjoined,  there  shall 
be  chosen,  to  make  up  the  said  Representatives  at  all  times, 
the  several  numbers  here  mentioned,  viz.  (Here  follow  the 
names  and  numbers.) 

Provided,  that  the  first  or  second  Representative  may, 
if  they  see  cause,  assign  the  remainder  of  the  400  repre- 
senters,  not  hereby  assigned,  or  so  many  of  them  as  they 
shall  see  cause  for,  unto  such  counties  as  shall  appear  in  this 
present  distribution  to  have  less  than  their  due  proportion. 
Provided  also,  that  where  any  city  or  borough,  to  which 
one  representer  or  more  is  assigned,  shall  be  found,  in  a  due 
proportion,  not  competent  alone  to  elect  a  representer,  or 
the  number  of  representers  assigned  thereto,  it  is  left  to 
future  Representatives  to  assign  such  a  number  of  parishes 
or  villages  near  adjoining  to  such  city  or  borough,  to  be 
joined  therewith  in  the  elections,  as  may  make  the  same 
proportionable. 

Thirdly.  That  the  people  do,  of  course,  choose  them- 
selves a  Representative  once  in  two  years,  and  shall  meet 
for  that  purpose  upon  the  first  Thursday  in  every  second 
May,  by  eleven  in  the  morning ;  and  the  Representatives  so 
chosen  to  meet  upon  the  second  Thursday  in  the  June  fol- 
lowing, at  the  usual  place  in  Westminster,  or  such  other 
place  as,  by  the  foregoing  Representative,  or  the  Council  of 
State  in  the  interval,  shall  be,  from  time  to  time,  appointed 
and  published  to  the  people,  at  the  least  twenty  days  before 
the  time  of  election ;  and  to  continue  their  sessions  there, 
or  elsewhere,  until  the  second  Thursday  in  December  follow- 
ing, unless  they  shall  adjourn  or  dissolve  themselves  sooner ; 
but  not  to  continue  longer.  The  election  of  the  first  Repre- 
sentative to  be  on  the  first  Thursday  in  May  1649;  and  that, 
and  all  future  elections,  to  be  according  to  the  rules  pre- 
scribed for  the  same  purpose  in  this  Agreement,  viz.  i.  That 
the  electors  in  every  division  shall  be  natives  or  denizens  of 
England  ;  not  persons  receiving  alms,  but  such  as  are  assessed 
ordinarily  towards  the  relief  of  the  poor ;  no  servants  to,  and 


494  APPENDIX 

receiving  wages  from,  any  particular  person  ;  and  in  all  elec- 
tions, except  for  the  Universities,  they  shall  be  men  of  twenty- 
one  years  of  age  or  upwards,  and  housekeepers,  dwelling 
within  the  division  for  which  the  election  is  :  provided,  that 
(until  the  end  of  seven  years  next  ensuing  the  time  herein 
limited  for  the  end  of  this  present  Parliament)  no  person 
shall  be  admitted  to,  or  have  any  hand  or  voice  in,  such  elec- 
tions who  hath  adhered  unto  or  assisted  the  King  against 
the  Parliament  in  any  of  the  late  wars  or  insurrections,  or 
who  shall  make  or  join  in,  or  abet,  any  forcible  opposition 
against  this  Agreement.  2.  That  such  persons,  and  such 
only,  may  be  elected  to  be  of  the  Representative,  who,  by 
the  rule  aforesaid,  are  to  have  voice  in  elections  in  one  place 
or  other.  Provided,  that  of  those  none  shall  be  eligible  for 
the  first  or  second  Representative  who  have  not  voluntarily 
assisted  the  Parliament  against  the  King,  either  in  person 
before  the  i4th  of  June  1645,  or  else  in  money,  plate,  horse, 
or  arms,  lent  upon  the  Propositions,  before  the  end  of  May 
1643  ;  or  who  have  joined  in,  or  abetted  the  treasonable  en- 
gagement in  London  in  1647  >  or  wno  declared  or  engaged 
themselves  for  a  cessation  of  arms  with  the  Scots  that  invaded 
this  nation  the  last  summer ;  or  for  compliance  with  the 
actors  in  any  insurrections  of  the  same  summer;  or  with  the 
Prince  of  Wales,  or  his  accomplices,  in  the  revolted  fleet. 
Provided  also,  that  such  persons  as,  by  the  rules  in  the  pre- 
ceding Article,  are  not  capable  of  electing  until  the  end  of 
seven  years,  shall  not  be  capable  to  be  elected  until  the  end 
of  fourteen  years  next  ensuing.  And  we  desire  and  recom- 
mend it  to  all  men,  that,  in  all  times  the  persons  to  be  chosen 
for  this  great  trust  may  be  men  of  courage,  fearing  God,  and 
hating  covetousness ;  and  that  our  Representatives  would 
make  the  best  provisions  for  that  end.  3.  That  whoever,  by 
the  rules  in  the  two  preceding  Articles,  are  incapable  of 
electing,  or  to  be  elected,  shall  presume  to  vote  in,  or  be 
present  at,  such  election  for  the  first  or  second  Representa- 
tive ;  or,  being  elected,  shall  presume  to  sit  or  vote  in  either 
of  the  said  Representatives,  shall  incur  the  pain  of  confisca- 
tion of  the  moiety  of  his  estate,  to  the  use  of  the  public,  in 


APPENDIX  495 

case  he  have  any  visible  estate  to  the  value  of  ,£50,  and  if 
he  has  not  such  an  estate,  then  shall  incur  the  pain  of  im- 
prisonment for  three  months.  And  if  any  person  shall 
forcibly  oppose,  molest,  or  hinder  the  people  capable  of 
electing  as  aforesaid,  in  their  quiet  and  free  election  of  repre- 
senters,  for  the  first  Representative,  then  each  person  so 
offending  shall  incur  the  penalty  or  confiscation  of  his  whole 
estate,  both  real  and  personal ;  and,  if  he  has  not  an  estate 
to  the  value  of  £50,  shall  suffer  imprisonment  during  one 
whole  year  without  bail  or  mainprize.  Provided,  that  the  of- 
fender in  each  such  case  be  convicted  within  three  months  next 
after  the  committing  of  his  offence,  and  the  first  Representa- 
tive is  to  make  further  provision  for  the  avoiding  of  these 
evils  in  future  elections.  4.  That  to  the  end  all  officers  of 
state  may  be  certainly  accountable,  and  no  faction  made  to 
maintain  corrupt  interests,  no  member  of  a  Council  of  State, 
nor  any  officer  of  any  salary-forces  in  army  or  garrison,  nor 
any  treasurer  or  receiver  of  public  money,  shall,  while  such, 
be  elected  to  be  of  a  Representative ;  and  in  case  any  such 
election  shall  be,  the  same  to  be  void.  And  in  case  any 
lawyer  shall  be  chosen  into  any  Representative  or  Council 
of  State,  then  he  shall  be  incapable  of  practice  as  a  lawyer 
during  that  trust.  5.  For  the  more  convenient  election  of 
Representatives,  each  county,  wherein  more  than  three  repre- 
senters  are  to  be  chosen,  with  the  town  corporate  and  cities, 
if  there  be  any,  lying  within  the  compass  thereof,  to  which 
no  representers  are  herein  assigned,  shall  be  divided  by  a 
due  proportion  into  so  many,  and  such  parts,  as  each  part 
may  elect  two,  and  no  part  above  three  representers.  For 
the  setting  forth  of  which  divisions,  and  the  ascertaining  of 
other  circumstances  hereafter  expressed,  so  as  to  make  the 
elections  less  subject  to  confusion  or  mistake,  in  order  to  the 
next  Representative,  Thomas  Lord  Grey  of  Groby,  Sir  John 
Danvers,  Sir  Henry  Holcroft,  knights ;  Moses  Wall,  gentle- 
man ;  Samuel  Moyer,  John  Langley,  Wm.  Hawkins,  Abra- 
ham Babington,  Daniel  Taylor,  Mark  Hilsley,  Rd.  Price, 
and  Col.  John  White,  citizens  of  London,  or  any  five  or 
more  of  them,  are  intrusted  to  nominate  and  appoint,  under 


496  APPENDIX 

their  hands  and  seals,  three  or  more  fit  persons  in  each 
county,  and  in  each  city  and  borough,  to  which  one  repre- 
senter  or  more  is  assigned,  to  be  as  Commissioners  for  the 
ends  aforesaid,  in  the  respective  counties,  cities,  and  boroughs ; 
and,  by  like  writing  under  their  hands  and  seals,  shall  certify 
into  the  Parliament  Records,  before  the  nth  of  February 
next,  the  names  of  the  Commissioners  so  appointed  for  the 
respective  counties,  cities,  and  boroughs,  which  Commis- 
sioners, or  any  three  or  more  of  them,  for  the  respective 
counties,  cities,  and  boroughs,  shall  before  the  end  of  Feb- 
ruary next,  by  writing  under  their  hands  and  seals,  app'oint 
two  fit  and  faithful  persons,  or  more,  in  each  hundred,  lathe, 
or  wapentake,  within  the  respective  counties,  and  in  each 
ward  within  the  City  of  London,  to  take  care  for  the  orderly 
taking  of  all  voluntary  subscriptions  to  this  Agreement,  by 
fit  persons  to  be  employed  for  that  purpose  in  every  parish, 
who  are  to  return  the  subscriptions  so  taken  to  the  persons 
that  employed  them,  keeping  a  transcript  thereof  to  them- 
selves ;  and  those  persons,  keeping  like  transcripts,  to  return 
the  original  subscriptions  to  the  respective  Commissioners 
by  whom  they  were  appointed,  at  or  before  the  i4th  day  of 
April  next,  to  be  registered  and  kept  in  the  chief  court  within 
the  respective  cities  and  boroughs.  And  the  said  Commis- 
sioners, or  any  three  or  more  of  them,  for  the  several  coun- 
ties, cities,  and  boroughs,  respectively,  shall,  where  more 
than  three  representers  are  to  be  chosen,  divide  such  coun- 
ties, as  also  the  City  of  London,  into  so  many  and  such  parts 
as  are  aforementioned,  and  shall  set  forth  the  bounds  of  such 
divisions ;  and  shall,  in  every  county,  city,  and  borough,  where 
any  representers  are  to  be  chosen,  and  in  every  such  divi- 
sion as  aforesaid  within  the  City  of  London,  and  within  the 
several  counties  so  divided,  respectively,  appoint  one  place 
certain  wherein  the  people  shall  meet  for  the  choice  of  the 
representers ;  and  some  one  fit  person,  or  more,  inhabiting 
within  each  borough,  city,  county,  or  division  respectively, 
to  be  present  at  the  time  and  place  of  election,  in  the  nature 
of  Sheriffs,  to  regulate  the  elections ;  and  by  poll,  or  other- 
wise, clearly  to  distinguish  and  judge  thereof,  and  to  make 


APPENDIX  497 

return  of  the  person  or  persons  elected,  as  is  hereafter  ex- 
pressed ;  and  shall  likewise,  in  writing  under  their  hands 
and  seals,  make  certificates  of  the  several  divisions,  with  the 
bounds  thereof,  by  them  set  forth,  and  of  the  certain  places 
of  meeting,  and  persons,  in  the  nature  of  Sheriff,  appointed 
in  them  respectively  as  aforesaid ;  and  cause  such  certificates 
to  be  returned  into  the  Parliament  Records  before  the  end  of 
April  next;  and  before  that  time  shall  also  cause  the  same 
to  be  published  in  every  parish  within  the  counties,  cities, 
and  boroughs  respectively ;  and  shall  in  every  such  parish 
likewise  nominate  and  appoint,  by  warrant  under  their  hands 
and  seals,  one  trusty  person,  or  more,  inhabiting  therein,  to 
make  a  true  list  of  all  the  persons  within  their  respective 
parishes,  who,  according  to  the  rules  aforegoing,  are  to  have 
voice  in  the  elections ;  and  expressing  who  amongst  them 
are,  by  the  same  rules,  capable  of  being  elected ;  and  such 
list,  with  the  said  warrant,  to  bring  in  and  return,  at  the 
time  and  place  of  election,  unto  the  person  appointed  in 
the  nature  of  Sheriff,  as  aforesaid,  for  that  borough,  city, 
county,  or  division  respectively ;  which  person  so  appointed 
as  Sheriff,  being  present  at  the  time  and  place  of  election ; 
or,  in  case  of  his  absence  by  the  space  of  one  hour  after  the 
time  limited  for  the  people's  meeting,  then  any  person  pres- 
ent that  is  eligible,  as  aforesaid,  whom  the  people  then  and 
there  assembled  shall  choose  for  that  end,  shall  receive  and 
keep  the  said  lists  and  admit  the  persons  therein  contained, 
or  so  many  of  them  as  are  present,  unto  a  free  vote  in  the 
said  elections  ;  and,  having  first  caused  this  Agreement  to  be 
publicly  read  in  the  audience  of  the  people,  shall  proceed 
unto,  and  regulate  and  keep  peace  and  order  in  the  elec- 
tions ;  and,  by  poll  or  otherwise,  openly  distinguish  and 
judge  of  the  same  ;  and  thereof,  by  certificate  or  writing 
under  the  hands  and  seals  of  himself,  and  six  or  more  of 
the  electors,  nominating  the  person  or  persons  duly  elected, 
shall  make  a  true  return  into  the  Parliament  Records  within 
twenty-one  days  after  the  election,  under  pain  for  default 
thereof,  or,  for  making  any  false  return,  to  forfeit  ^100  to 
the  public  use ;  and  also  cause  indentures  to  be  made,  and 


498  APPENDIX 

unchangeably  sealed  and  delivered,  between  himself  and  six 
or  more  of  the  said  electors,  on  the  one  part,  and  the  per- 
sons, or  each  person,  elected  severally,  on  the  other  part, 
expressing  their  election  of  him  as  a  representer  of  them 
according  to  this  Agreement,  and  his  acceptance  of  that  trust, 
and  his  promise  accordingly  to  perform  the  same  with  faith- 
fulness, to  the  best  of  his  understanding  and  ability,  for  the 
glory  of  God  and  good  of  the  people.  This  course  is  to 
hold  for  the  first  Representative,  which  is  to  provide  for 
the  ascertaining  of  these  circumstances  in  order  to  future 
Representatives. 

Fourthly.  That  150  members  at  least  be  always  present 
in  each  sitting  of  the  Representative,  at  the  passing  of  any 
law  or  doing  of  any  act  whereby  the  people  are  to  be  bound ; 
saving,  that  the  number  of  sixty  may  make  a  House  for 
debates  or  resolutions  that  are  preparatory  thereunto. 

Fifthly.  That  the  Representative  shall,  within  twenty  days 
after  their  first  meeting,  appoint  a  Council  of  State  for  the 
managing  of  public  affairs,  until  the  tenth  day  after  the  meet- 
ing of  the  next  Representative,  unless  that  next  Representa- 
tive think  fit  to  put  an  end  to  that  trust  sooner.  And  the 
same  Council  to  act  and  proceed  therein,  according  to  such 
instructions  and  limitations  as  the  Representative  shall  give, 
and  not  otherwise. 

Sixthly.  That  in  each  interval  between  biennial  Represen- 
tatives, the  Council  of  State,  in  case  of  imminent  danger  or 
extreme  necessity,  may  summon  a  Representative  to  be 
forthwith  chosen,  and  to  meet ;  so  as  the  Session  thereof 
continue  not  above  eighty  days ;  and  so  as  it  dissolve  at 
least  fifty  days  before  the  appointed  time  for  the  next  bien- 
nial Representative  ;  and  upon  the  fiftieth  day  so  preceding 
it  shall  dissolve  of  course,  if  not  otherwise  dissolved  sooner. 

Seventhly.  That  no  member  of  any  Representative  be 
made  either  receiver,  treasurer,  or  other  officer,  during  that 
employment,  saving  to  be  a  member  of  the  Council  of  State. 

Eighthly.  That  the  Representatives  have,  and  shall  be 
understood  to  have,  the  supreme  trust  in  order  to  the  pres- 
ervation and  government  of  the  whole ;  and  that  their  power 


APPENDIX 


499 


extend,  without  the  consent  or  concurrence  of  any  other 
person  or  persons,  to  the  erecting  and  abolishing  of  Courts 
of  Justice  and  public  offices,  and  to  the  enacting,  altering, 
repealing,  and  declaring  of  laws,  and  the  highest  and  final 
judgment,  concerning  all  natural  or  civil  things,  but  not  con- 
cerning things  spiritual  or  evangelical.  Provided  that,  even 
in  things  natural  and  civil,  these  six  particulars  next  follow- 
ing are,  and  shall  be,  understood  to  be  excepted  and  reserved 
from  our  Representatives,  viz.  i.  We  do  not  empower  them 
to  impress  or  constrain  any  person  to  serve  in  foreign  war, 
either  by  sea  or  land,  nor  for  any  military  service  within  the 
kingdom ;  save  that  they  may  take  order  for  the  forming, 
training,  and  exercising  of  the  people  in  a  military  way,  to 
be  in  readiness  for  resisting  of  foreign  invasions,  suppressing 
of  sudden  insurrections,  or  for  assisting  in  execution  of  the 
laws  ;  and  may  take  order  for  the  employing  and  conducting 
of  them  for  those  ends ;  provided,  that,  even  in  such  cases, 
none  be  compellable  to  go  out  of  the  county  he  lives  in,  if 
he  procure  another  to  serve  in  his  room.  2.  That,  after  the 
time  herein  limited  for  the  commencement  of  the  first  Rep- 
resentative, none  of  the  people  may  be  at  any  time  questioned 
for  any  thing  said  or  done  in  relation  to  the  late  wars  or 
public  differences,  otherwise  than  in  execution  or  pursuance 
of  the  determinations  of  the  present  House  of  Commons, 
against  such  as  have  adhered  to  the  King,  or  his  interest, 
against  the  people ;  and  saving  that  accomptants  for  public 
moneys  received,  shall  remain  accountable  for  the  same. 
3.  That  no  securities  given,  or  to  be  given,  by  the  public 
faith  of  the  nation,  nor  any  engagements  of  the  public  faith 
for  satisfaction  of  debts  and  damages,  shall  be  made  void  or 
invalid  by  the  next  or  any  future  Representatives ;  except 
to  such  creditors  as  have,  or  shall  have,  justly  forfeited  the 
same  :  and  saving,  that  the  next  Representative  may  con- 
firm or  make  null,  in  part  or  in  whole,  all  gifts  of  lands, 
moneys,  offices,  or  otherwise,  made  by  the  present  Parlia- 
ment to  any  member  or  attendant  of  either  House.  4.  That, 
in  any  laws  hereafter  to  be  made,  no  person,  by  virtue  of  any 
tenure,  grant,  charter,  patent,  degree  or  birth,  shall  be  privi- 


500  APPENDIX 

leged  from  subjection  thereto,  or  from  being  bound  thereby, 
as  well  as  others.  5.  That  the  Representative  may  not  give 
judgment  upon  any  man's  person  or  estate,  where  no  law 
hath  before  provided ;  save  only  in  calling  to  account  and 
punishing  public  officers  for  abusing  or  failing  in  their  trust. 
6.  That  no  Representative  may  in  anywise  render  up,  or 
give,  or  take  away,  any  of  the  foundations  of  common  right, 
liberty,  and  safety  contained  in  this  Agreement,  nor  level 
men's  estates,  destroy  property,  or  make  all  things  common ; 
and  that,  in  all  matters  of  such  fundamental  concernment, 
there  shall  be  a  liberty  to  particular  members  of  the  said 
Representatives  to  enter  their  dissents  from  the  major  vote. 
Ninthly.  Concerning  religion  we  agreed  as  followeth :  — 
i.  It  is  intended  that  the  Christian  religion  be  held  forth 
and  recommended  as  the  public  profession  in  this  nation, 
which  we  desire  may,  by  the  grace  of  God,  be  reformed  to 
the  greatest  purity  in  doctrine,  worship,  and  discipline,  ac- 
cording to  the  Word  of  God ;  the  instructing  the  people 
thereunto  in  a  public  way,  so  it  be  not  compulsive ;  as  also 
the  maintaining  of  able  teachers  for  that  end,  and  for  the 
confutation  or  discovering  of  heresy,  error,  and  whatsoever 
is  contrary  to  sound  doctrine,  is  allowed  to  be  provided  for 
by  our  Representatives ;  the  maintenance  of  which  teachers 
may  be  out  of  a  public  treasury,  and,  we  desire,  not  by 
tithes :  provided,  that  Popery  or  Prelacy  be  not  held  forth 
as  the  public  way  or  profession  in  this  nation.  2.  That,  to 
the  public  profession  so  held  forth,  none  be  compelled  by 
penalties  or  otherwise ;  but  only  may  be  endeavoured  to  be 
won  by  sound  doctrine  and  the  example  of  a  good  conversa- 
tion. 3.  That  such  as  profess  faith  in  God  by  Jesus  Christ, 
however  differing  in  judgment  from  the  doctrine,  worship, 
or  discipline  publicly  held  forth,  as  aforesaid,  shall  not  be 
restrained  from,  but  shall  be  protected  in,  the  profession  of 
their  faith  and  exercise  of  religion,  according  to  their  con- 
sciences, in  any  place  except  such  as  shall  be  set  apart  for 
the  public  worship ;  where  we  provide  not  for  them,  unless 
they  have  leave,  so  as  they  abuse  not  this  liberty  to  the  civil 
injury  of  others  or  to  actual  disturbance  of  the  public  peace 


APPENDIX  5OI 

on  their  parts.  Nevertheless,  it  is  not  intended  to  be  hereby 
provided  that  this  liberty  shall  necessarily  extend  to  Popery 
or  Prelacy.  4.  That  all  laws,  ordinances,  statutes,  and 
clauses  in  any  law,  statute,  or  ordinance  to  the  contrary  of 
the  liberty  herein  provided  for,  in  the  two  particulars  next 
preceding  concerning  religion,  be,  and  are  hereby,  repealed 
and  made  void. 

Tenthly.  It  is  agreed,  that  whosoever  shall  by  force  of 
arms,  resist  the  orders  of  the  next  or  any  future  Representa- 
tive (except  in  case  where  such  Representative  shall  evi- 
dently render  up,  or  give,  or  take  away  the  foundations  of 
common  right,  liberty,  and  safety,  contained  in  this  Agree- 
ment), he  shall  forthwith,  after  his  or  their  such  resistance, 
lose  the  benefit  and  protection  of  the  laws,  and  shall  be 
punishable  with  death,  as  an  enemy  and  traitor  to  the  nation. 
Of  the  things  expressed  in  this  Agreement :  the  certain  end- 
ing of  this  Parliament,  as  the  first  Article ;  the  equal  or  pro- 
portionable distribution  of  the  number  of  the  representers  to 
be  elected,  as  in  the  second ;  the  certainty  of  the  people's 
meeting  to  elect  for  Representatives  biennial,  and  their 
freedom  in  elections ;  with  the  certainty  of  meeting,  sitting, 
and  ending  of  Representatives  so  elected,  which  are  pro- 
vided for  in  the  third  Article ;  as  also  the  qualifications  of 
persons  to  elect  or  be  elected,  as  in  the  first  and  second 
particulars  under  the  third  Article  ;  also  the  certainty  of  a 
number  for  passing  a  law  or  preparatory  debates,  provided 
for  in  the  fourth  Article;  the  matter  of  the  fifth  Article,  con- 
cerning the  Council  of  State,  and  of  the  sixth,  concerning 
the  calling,  sitting  and  ending  of  Representatives  extraordi- 
nary ;  also  the  power  of  Representatives  to  be,  as  in  the 
eighth  Article,  and  limited,  as  in  the  six  reserves  next  follow- 
ing the  same :  likewise  the  second  and  third  particulars 
under  the  ninth  Article  concerning  religion,  and  the  whole 
matter  of  the  tenth  Article ;  all  these  we  do  account  and 
declare  to  be  fundamental  to  our  common  right,  liberty,  and 
safety ;  and  therefore  do  both  agree  thereunto,  and  resolve 
to  maintain  the  same  as  God  shall  enable  us.  The  rest  of 
the  matters  in  this  Agreement  we  account  to  be  useful  and 


502  APPENDIX 

good  for  the  public ;  and  the  particular  circumstances  of 
numbers,  times,  and  places,  expressed  in  the  several  Articles, 
we  account  not  fundamental ;  but  we  find  them  necessary 
to  be  here  determined,  for  the  making  the  Agreement  cer- 
tain and  practicable,  and  do  hold  these  most  convenient 
that  are  here  set  down  ;  and  therefore  do  positively  agree 
thereunto.  By  the  appointment  of  his  Excellency  the  Lord- 
General  and  his  General  Council  of  Officers. 

JOHN  RUSHWORTH,  Sec. 

7.   LOCKE,  ON  THE  EXTENT  OF  THE  LEGISLATIVE 
POWER.    1 690 

The  great  end  of  men's  entering  into  society  being  the 
enjoyment  of  their  properties  in  peace  and  safety,  and  the 
great  instrument  and  means  of  that  being  the  laws  estab- 
lished in  that  society,  the  first  and  fundamental  positive  law 
of  all  commonwealths  is  the  establishing  of  the  legislative 
power,  as  the  first  and  fundamental  natural  law  which  is  to 
govern  even  the  legislative  itself  is  the  preservation  of  the 
society  and  (as  far  as  will  consist  with  the  public  good)  of 
every  person  in  it.  This  legislative  is  not  only  the  supreme 
power  of  the  commonwealth,  but  sacred  and  unalterable  in 
the  hands  where  the  community  have  once  placed  it.  Nor 
can  any  edict  of  anybody  else,  in  what  form  soever  conceived, 
or  by  what  power  soever  backed,  have  the  force  and  obliga- 
tion of  a  law  which  has  not  its  sanction  from  that  legislative 
which  the  public  has  chosen  and  appointed ;  for  without 
this  the  law  could  not  have  that  which  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  its  being  a  law,  the  consent  of  the  society,  over  whom 
nobody  can  have  a  power  to  make  laws  but  by  their  own 
consent  and  by  authority  received  from  them  ;  and  therefore 
all  the  obedience,  which  by  the  most  solemn  ties  any  one 
can  be  obliged  to  pay,  ultimately  terminates  in  this  supreme 
power,  and  is  directed  by  those  laws  which  it  enacts.  Nor 
can  any  oaths  to  any  foreign  power  whatsoever,  or  any 
domestic  subordinate  power,  discharge  any  member  of  the 
society  from  his  obedience  to  the  legislative,  acting  pursuant 


APPENDIX  503 

to  their  trust,  nor  oblige  him  to  any  obedience  contrary  to 
the  laws  so  enacted  or  farther  than  they  do  allow,  it  being 
ridiculous  to  imagine  one  can  be  tied  ultimately  to  obey 
any  power  in  the  society  which  is  not  the  supreme. 

Though  the  legislative,  whether  placed  in  one  or  more, 
whether  it  be  always  in  being  or  only  by  intervals,  though  it 
be  the  supreme  power  in  every  commonwealth ;  yet,  first, 
it  is  not,  nor  can  possibly  be,  absolutely  arbitrary  over  the 
lives  and  fortunes  of  the  people.  For  it  being  but  the  joint 
power  of  every  member  of  the  society  given  up  to  that  per- 
son or  assembly  which  is  legislator,  it  can  be  no  more  than 
those  persons  had  in  a  state  of  Nature  before  they  entered 
into  society,  and  gave  it  up  to  the  community.  For  nobody 
can  transfer  to  another  more  power  than  he  has  in  himself, 
and  nobody  has  an  absolute  arbitrary  power  over  himself, 
or  over  any  other,  to  destroy  his  own  life,  or  take  away  the 
life  or  property  of  another.  A  man,  as  has  been  proved, 
cannot  subject  himself  to  the  arbitrary  power  of  another ; 
and  having,  in  the  state  of  Nature,  no  arbitrary  power  over 
the  life,  liberty,  or  possession  of  another,  but  only  so  much  as 
the  law  of  Nature  gave  him  for  the  preservation  of  himself 
and  the  rest  of  mankind,  this  is  all  he  doth,  or  can  give  up 
to  the  commonwealth,  and  by  it  to  the  legislative  power,  so 
that  the  legislative  can  have  no  more  than  this.  Their  power 
in  the  utmost  bounds  of  it  is  limited  to  the  public  good  of 
the  society.  It  is  a  power  that  hath  no  other  end  but  pres- 
ervation, and  therefore  can  never  have  a  right  to  destroy, 
enslave,  or  designedly  to  impoverish  the  subjects ;  the  obli- 
gations of  the  law  of  Nature  cease  not  in  society,  but  only 
in  many  cases  are  drawn  closer,  and  have,  by  human  laws, 
known  penalties  annexed  to  them  to  enforce  their  observa- 
tion. Thus  the  law  of  Nature  stands  as  an  eternal  rule  to 
all  men,  legislators  as  well  as  others.  The  rules  that  they 
make  for  other  men's  actions  must,  as  well  as  their  own  and 
other  men's  actions,  be  conformable  to  the  law  of  Nature, 
i.e.  to  the  will  of  God,  of  which  that  is  a  declaration,  and 
the  fundamental  law  of  Nature  being  the  preservation  of 
mankind,  no  human  sanction  can  be  good  or  valid  against  it. 


504  APPENDIX 

Secondly.  The  legislative  or  supreme  authority  cannot 
assume  to  itself  a  power  to  rule  by  extemporary  arbitrary 
decrees,  but  is  bound  to  dispense  justice  and  decide  the 
rights  of  the  subject  by  promulgated  standing  laws,  and 
known  authorized  judges.  For  the  law  of  Nature  being  un- 
written, and  so  nowhere  to  be  found  but  in  the  minds  of 
men,  they  who,  through  passion  or  interest,  shall  miscite  or 
misapply  it,  cannot  so  easily  be  convinced  of  their  mistake 
where  there  is  no  established  judge  ;  and  so  it  serves  not  as 
it  ought,  to  determine  the  rights  and  fence  the  properties  of 
those  that  live  under  it,  especially  where  every  one  is  judge, 
interpreter,  and  executioner  of  it  too,  and  that  in  his  own 
case ;  and  he  that  has  right  on  his  side,  having  ordinarily 
but  his  own  single  strength,  hath  not  force  enough  to  defend 
himself  from  injuries  or  punish  delinquents.  To  avoid  these 
inconveniences  which  disorder  men's  properties  in  the  state 
of  Nature,  men  unite  into  societies  that  they  may  have  the 
united  strength  of  the  whole  society  to  secure  and  defend 
their  properties,  and  may  have  standing  rules  to  bound  it  by 
which  every  one  may  know  what  is  his.  To  this  end  it  is 
that  men  give  up  all  their  natural  power  to  the  society  they 
enter  into,  and  the  community  put  the  legislative  power  into 
such  hands  as  they  think  fit,  with  this  trust,  that  they  shall 
be  governed  by  declared  laws,  or  else  their  peace,  quiet,  and 
property  will  still  be  at  the  same  uncertainty  as  it  was  in  the 
state  of  Nature. 

Absolute  arbitrary  power,  or  governing  without  settled 
standing  laws,  can  neither  of  them  consist  with  the  ends  of 
society  and  government,  which  men  would  not  quit  the  free- 
dom of  the  state  of  Nature  for,  and  tie  themselves  up  under 
were  it  not  to  preserve  their  lives,  liberties,  and  fortunes ;  and 
by  stated  rules  of  right  and  property  to  secure  their  peace 
and  quiet.  It  cannot  be  supposed  that  they  should  intend, 
had  they  a  power  so  to  do,  to  give  any  one  or  more  an 
absolute  arbitrary  power  over  their  persons  and  estates,  and 
put  a  force  into  the  magistrate's  hand  to  execute  his  un- 
limited will  arbitrarily  upon  them ;  this  were  to  put  them- 
selves into  a  worse  condition  than  the  state  of  Nature, 


APPENDIX  505 

wherein  they  had  a  liberty  to  defend  their  right  against  the 
injuries  of  others,  and  were  upon  equal  terms  of  force  to 
maintain  it,  whether  invaded  by  a  single  man  or  many  in  com- 
bination. Whereas  by  supposing  they  have  given  up  them- 
selves to  the  absolute  arbitrary  power  and  will  of  a  legislator, 
they  have  disarmed  themselves,  and  armed  him  to  make 
a  prey  of  them  when  he  pleases  ;  he  being  in  a  much  worse 
condition  that  is  exposed  to  the  arbitrary  power  of  one  man 
who  has  the  command  of  a  hundred  thousand  than  he  that 
is  exposed  to  the  arbitrary  power  of  a  hundred  thousand 
single  men,  nobody  being  secure,  that  his  will  who  has  such 
a  command  is  better  than  that  of  other  men,  though  his 
force  be  a  hundred  thousand  times  stronger.  And,  there- 
fore, whatever  form  the  commonwealth  is  under,  the  ruling 
power  ought  to  govern  by  declared  and  received  laws,  and 
not  by  extemporary  dictates  and  undetermined  resolutions, 
for  then  mankind  will  be  in  a  far  worse  condition  than  in 
the  state  of  Nature  if  they  shall  have  armed  one  or  a  few 
men  with  the  joint  power  of  a  multitude,  to  force  them  to 
obey  at  pleasure  the  exorbitant  and  unlimited  decrees  of 
their  sudden  thoughts,  or  unrestrained,  and  till  that  moment, 
unknown  wills,  without  having  any  measures  set  down  which 
may  guide  and  justify  their  actions.  For  all  the  power  the 
government  has,  being  only  for  the  good  of  the  society,  as 
it  ought  not  to  be  arbitrary  and  at  pleasure,  so  it  ought  to 
be  exercised  by  established  and  promulgated  laws,  that  both 
the  people  may  know  their  duty,  and  be  safe  and  secure 
within  the  limits  of  the  law,  and  the  rulers,  too,  kept  within 
their  due  bounds,  and  not  be  tempted  by  the  power  they 
have  in  their  hands  to  employ  it  to  purposes,  and  by  such 
measures  as  they  would  not  have  known,  and  own  not 
willingly. 

Thirdly.  The  supreme  power  cannot  take  from  any  man 
any  part  of  his  property  without  his  own  consent.  For  the 
preservation  of  property  being  the  end  of  government,  and 
that  for  which  men  enter  into  society,  it  necessarily  sup- 
poses and  requires  that  the  people  should  have  property, 
without  which  they  must  be  supposed  to  lose  that  by  enter- 


506  APPENDIX 

ing  into  society,  which  was  the  end  for  which  they  entered 
into  it ;  too  gross  an  absurdity  for  any  man  to  own.  Men, 
therefore,  in  society  having  property,  they  have  such  a  right 
to  the  goods,  which  by  the  law  of  the  community  are  theirs, 
that  nobody  hath  a  right  to  take  them,  or  any  part  of  them, 
from  them  without  their  own  consent ;  without  this  they  have 
no  property  at  all.  For  I  have  truly  no  property  in  that  which 
another  can  by  right  take  from  me  when  he  pleases  against  my 
consent.  Hence  it  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  the  supreme  or 
legislative  power  of  any  commonwealth  can  do  what  it  will,  and 
dispose  of  the  estates  of  the  subject  arbitrarily,  or  take  any  part 
of  them  at  pleasure.  This  is  not  much  to  be  feared  in  gov- 
ernments where  the  legislative  consists  wholly  or  in  part  in 
assemblies  which  are  variable,  whose  members  upon  the  dis- 
solution of  the  assembly  are  subjects  under  the  common  laws 
of  their  country,  equally  with  the  rest.  But  in  governments 
where  the  legislative  is  in  one  lasting  assembly,  always  in 
being,  or  in  one  man  as  in  absolute  monarchies,  there  is 
danger  still,  that  they  will  think  themselves  to  have  a  distinct 
interest  from  the  rest  of  the  community,  and  so  will  be  apt 
to  increase  their  own  riches  and  power  by  taking  what  they 
think  fit  from  the  people.  For  a  man's  property  is  not  at 
all  secure,  though  there  be  good  and  equitable  laws  to  set 
the  bounds  of  it  between  him  and  his  fellow-subjects,  if  he 
who  commands  those  subjects  have  power  to  take  from  any 
private  man  what  part  he  pleases  of  his  property,  and  use 
and  dispose  of  it  as  he  thinks  good. 

But  government  into  whosesoever  hands  it  is  put,  being  as 
I  have  before  showed,  entrusted  with  this  condition,  and  for 
this  end,  that  men  might  have  and  secure  their  properties, 
the  prince  or  senate,  however  it  may  have  power  to  make 
laws  for  the  regulating  of  property  between  the  subjects  one 
amongst  another,  yet  can  never  have  a  power  to  take  to 
themselves  the  whole,  or  any  part  of  the  subjects'  property 
without  their  own  consent;  for  this  would  be  in  effect  to 
leave  them  no  property  at  all.  And  to  let  us  see  that  even 
absolute  power,  where  it  is  necessary,  is  not  arbitrary  by 
being  absolute,  but  is  still  limited  by  that  reason,  and  con- 


APPENDIX  507 

fined  to  those  ends  which  required  it  in  some  cases  to  be 
absolute,  we  need  look  no  farther  than  the  common  practice 
of  martial  discipline.  For  the  preservation  of  the  army, 
and  in  it  of  the  whole  commonwealth,  requires  an  absolute 
obedience  to  the  command  of  every  superior  officer,  and  it 
is  justly  death  to  disobey  or  dispute  the  most  dangerous  or 
unreasonable  of  them ;  but  yet  we  see  that  neither  the 
serjeant  that  could  command  a  soldier  to  march  up  to  the 
mouth  of  a  cannon,  or  stand  in  a  breach  where  he  is  almost 
sure  to  perish,  can  command  that  soldier  to  give  him  one 
penny  of  his  money ;  nor  the  general  that  can  condemn  him 
to  death  for  deserting  his  post,  or  not  obeying  the  most 
desperate  orders,  cannot  yet  with  all  his  absolute  power  of 
life  and  death  dispose  of  one  farthing  of  that  soldier's  estate, 
or  seize  one  jot  of  his  goods ;  whom  yet  he  can  command 
anything,  and  hang  for  the  least  disobedience.  Because 
such  a  blind  obedience  is  necessary  to  that  end  for  which 
the  commander  has  his  power  —  viz.,  the  preservation  of 
the  rest,  but  the  disposing  of  his  goods  has  nothing  to  do 
with  it. 

It  is  true  governments  cannot  be  supported  without  great 
charge,  and  it  is  fit  every  one  who  enjoys  his  share  of  the 
protection  should  pay  out  of  his  estate  his  proportion  for 
the  maintenance  of  it.  But  still  it  must  be  with  his  own 
consent  —  i.e.  the  consent  of  the  majority,  giving  it  either 
by  themselves  or  their  representatives  chosen  by  them ;  for 
if  any  one  shall  claim  a  power  to  lay  and  levy  taxes  on  the 
people  by  his  own  authority,  and  without  such  consent  of 
the  people,  he  thereby  invades  the  fundamental  law  of  prop- 
erty, and  subverts  the  end  of  government.  For  what  prop- 
erty have  I  in  that  which  another  may  by  right  take  when 
he  pleases  to  himself  ? 

Fourthly.  The  legislative  cannot  transfer  the  power  of 
making  laws  to  any  other  hands,  for  it  being  but  a  delegated 
power  from  the  people,  they  who  have  it  cannot  pass  it  over 
to  others.  The  people  alone  can  appoint  the  form  of  the 
commonwealth,  which  is  by  constituting  the  legislative,  and 
appointing  in  whose  hands  that  shall  be.  And  when  the 


508  APPENDIX 

people  have  said,  "We  will. submit,  and  be  governed  by 
laws  made  by  such  men,  and  in  such  forms,"  nobody  else 
can  say  other  men  shall  make  laws  for  them ;  nor  can  they 
be  bound  by  any  laws  but  such  as  are  enacted  by  those 
whom  they  have  chosen  and  authorised  to  make  laws  for 
them. 

These  are  the  bounds  which  the  trust  that  is  put  in  them 
by  the  society  and  the  law  of  God  and  Nature  have  set  to 
the  legislative  power  of  every  commonwealth,  in  all  forms 
of  government.  First :  They  are  to  govern  by  promulgated 
established  laws,  not  to  be  varied  in  particular  cases,  but  to 
have  one  rule  for  rich  and  poor,  for  the  favourite  at  Court, 
and  the  countryman  at  plough.  Secondly  :  These  laws  also 
ought  to  be  designed  for  no  other  end  ultimately  but  the 
good  of  the  people.  Thirdly :  They  must  not  raise  taxes 
on  the  property  of  the  people  without  the  consent  of  the 
people  given  by  themselves  or  their  deputies.  And  this 
properly  concerns  only  such  governments  where  the  legis- 
lative is  always  in  being,  or  at  least  where  the  people  have 
not  reserved  any  part  of  the  legislative  to  deputies,  to  be 
from  time  to  time  chosen  by  themselves.  Fourthly  :  Legis- 
lative neither  must  nor  can  transfer  the  power  of  making 
laws  to  anybody  else,  or  place  it  anywhere  but  where  the 
people  have.  —  Two  Treatises  of  Government,  c.  xii. 


8.  THE  VIRGINIAN  DECLARATION  OF  RIGHTS,  JUNE  12,  1776 

(The  text  follows  that  in  D.  G.  Ritchie's  Natural  Rights, 
Appendix.) 

A  declaration  of  rights  made  by  the  Representatives  of  the 
good  people  of  Virginia,  assembled  in  full  and  free  Con- 
vention, which  rights  do  pertain  to  them  and  their 
posterity  as  the  basis  and  foundation  of  government. 

I.  That  all  men  are  by  nature  equally  free  and  indepen- 
dent, and  have  certain  inherent  rights,  of  which,  when  they 
enter  into  a  state  of  society,  they  cannot  by  any  compact 


APPENDIX  509 

deprive  or  divest  their  posterity ;  namely,  the  enjoyment  of 
life  and  liberty,  with  the  means  of  acquiring  and  possess- 
ing property,  and  pursuing  and  obtaining  happiness  and 
safety. 

II.  That  all  power  is  vested  in,  and  consequently  derived 
from,  the  people ;   that  magistrates  are  their  trustees  and 
servants,  and  at  all  times  amenable  to  them. 

III.  That  government  is,  or  ought  to  be,  instituted  for 
the  common  benefit,  protection,  and  security  of  the  people, 
nation,  or  community ;  of  all  the  various  modes  and  forms 
of  government,  that  is  best  which  is  capable  of  producing  the 
greatest  degree  of  happiness  and  safety,  and  is  most  effectu- 
ally secured  against  the  danger  of  maladministration;  and 
that,  when  a  government  shall  be  found  inadequate  or  con- 
trary to  these  purposes,  a  majority  of  the  community  hath 
an  indubitable,  unalienable,  and  indefeasible  right  to  reform, 
alter,  or  abolish  it,  in  such  manner  as  shall  be  judged  most 
conducive  to  the  public  weal. 

IV.  That  no  man,  or  set  of  men,  are  entitled  to  exclusive 
or  separate  emoluments  or  privileges  from  the  community 
but  in  consideration  of  public  services,  which  not  being  de- 
scendible, neither  ought  the  offices  of  magistrate,  legislator, 
or  judge  to  be  hereditary. 

V.  That  the  legislative,  executive,   and  judicial  powers 
should   be   separate   and  distinct ;  and  that  the  members 
thereof  may  be  restrained  from  oppression,  by  feeling  and 
participating  the  burthens  of  the  people,  they  should,  at  fixed 
periods,  be  reduced  to  a  private   station,  return  into  that 
body  from  which  they  were  originally  taken,  and  the  vacan- 
cies be  supplied  by  frequent,  certain,  and  regular  elections> 
in  which  all,  or  any  part  of  the  former  members  to  be  again 
eligible  or  ineligible,  as  the  laws  shall  direct. 

VI.  That  all  elections  ought  to  be  free,  and  that  all  men 
having  sufficient  evidence  of  permanent  common  interest 
with,  and  attachment  to  the  community,  have  the  right  of 
suffrage,  and  cannot  be  taxed,  or  deprived  of  their  property 
for  public  uses,  without  their  own  consent,  or  that  of  their 
representatives  so  elected,  nor  bound  by  any  law  to  which 


510  APPENDIX 

they  have   not  in  like   manner  assented,   for  the  public 
good. 

VII.  That  all  power  of  suspending  laws,  or  the  execution 
of  laws,  by  any  authority,  without  consent  of  the  representa- 
tives of  the  people,  is  injurious  to  their  rights,  ana  ought  not 
to  be  exercised. 

VIII.  That  in  all  capital  or  criminal  prosecutions  a  man 
hath  a  right  to  demand  the  cause  and  nature  of  his  accusa- 
tion, to  be  confronted  with  the  accusers  and  witnesses,  to 
call  for  evidence  in  his  favour,  and  to  a  speedy  trial  by  an 
impartial  jury  of  twelve  men  of  his  vicinage,  without  whose 
unanimous  consent  he  cannot  be  found  guilty ;  nor  can  he 
be  compelled  to  give  evidence  against  himself;  that  no  man 
be  deprived  of  his  liberty,  except  by  the  law  of  the  land  or 
the  judgment  of  his  peers. 

IX.  That  excessive  bail  ought  not  to  be  required,  nor 
excessive  fines  imposed,  nor  cruel  and  unusual  punishments 
inflicted. 

X.  That  general  warrants,  whereby  an  officer  or  messen- 
ger may  be  commanded  to  search  suspected  places  without 
evidence  of  a  fact  committed,  or  to  seize  any  person  or 
persons  not  named,  or  whose  offence   is  not  particularly 
described  and  supported  by   evidence,  are   grievous   and 
oppressive,  and  ought  not  to  be  granted. 

XL  That  in  controversies  respecting  property,  and  in 
suits  between  man  and  man,  the  ancient  trial  by  jury  of 
twelve  men  is  preferable  to  any  other,  and  ought  to  be  held 
sacred. 

XII.  That  the  freedom  of  the  press  is  one  of  the  great 
bulwarks  of  liberty,  and  can  never  be  restrained  but  by 
despotic  governments. 

XIII.  That  a  well-regulated  militia,  composed  of  the  body 
of  the  people,  trained  to  arms,  is  the  proper,  natural,  and 
safe  defence  of  a  free  State ;  that  standing  armies  in  time 
of  peace  should  be  avoided  as  dangerous  to  liberty ;  and 
that  in  all  cases  the  military  should  be  under  strict  subordi- 
nation to,  and  governed  by,  the  civil  power. 

XIV.  That  the  people  have  a  right  to  uniform  government ; 


APPENDIX  5 1 1 

and  therefore  that  no  government  separate  from  or  indepen- 
dent of  the  government  of  Virginia  ought  to  be  erected  or 
established  within  the  limits  thereof. 

XV.  That  no  free  government,  or  the  blessing  of  liberty, 
can  be  preserved  to  any  people  but  by  a  firm  adherence  to 
justice,  moderation,  temperance,  frugality,  and  virtue,  and 
by  a  frequent  recurrence  to  fundamental  principles. 

XVI.  That  religion,  or  the  duty  which  we  owe  to  our 
Creator,  and  the  manner  of  discharging  it,  can  be  directed 
only  by  reason  and  conviction,  not  by  force  or  violence; 
and  therefore  all  men  are  equally  entitled  to  the  free  exer- 
cise of  religion,  according  to  the  dictates  of  conscience  ;  and 
that  it  is  the  duty  of  all  to  practise  Christian  forbearance, 
love,  and  charity  towards  each  other. 


9.   DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 
OF  AMERICA,  JULY  4,  1776 

(Macdonald's  Select  Documents  illustrative  of  the  History  of  the 
United  States.} 

June  7,  1776.  —  Richard  Henry  Lee  of  Virginia  submitted  to  the 
Continental  Congress  three  resolutions,  the  first  of  which  declared 
"  That  these  United  Colonies  are,  and  of  right  ought  to  be,  free  and 
independent  States,  that  they  are  absolved  from  all  allegiance  to  the 
British  Crown,  and  that  all  political  connection  between  them  and  the 
State  of  Great  Britain  is,  and  ought  to  be,  totally  dissolved."  The  reso- 
lutions were  seconded  by  John  Adams,  and  on  the  loth  a  committee, 
consisting  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  John  Adams,  Benjamin  I-'ranklin,  Roger 
Sherman,  and  Robert  R.  Livingstone,  svas  appointed  "to  prepare  a 
declaration  to  the  effect  of  the  said  first  resolution."  On  the  28th  the 
committee  brought  in  a  draft  of  a  declaration  of  independence.  The 
resolution  previously  submitted  was  adopted  July  2  ;  on  the  4th 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  agreed  to,  and  signed  by  John 
Hancock  as  president  of  the  Congress.  Congress  directed  that  copies 
be  sent  "  to  the  several  Assemblies,  Conventions,  and  Committees  or 
Councils  of  Safety,  and  to  the  several  commanding  officers  of  the  con- 
tinental troops  ;  that  it  be  proclaimed  in  each  of  the  United  States, 
and  at  the  head  of  the  army."  The  members  of  Congress  signed  the 
Declaration  August  2. 


512  APPENDIX 


In  Congress,  July  4,  1776 

The  unanimous  Declaration  of  the  Thirteen  United  States 
of  America 

When,  in  the  Course  of  human  events,  it  becomes  neces- 
sary for  one  people  to  dissolve  the  political  bands  which 
have  connected  them  with  another,  and  to  assume  among 
the  Powers  of  the  earth  the  separate  and  equal  station  to 
which  the  Laws  of  Nature  and  of  Nature's  God  entitle  them, 
a  decent  respect  to  the  opinions  of  mankind  requires  that 
they  should  declare  the  causes  which  impel  them  to  the 
separation. 

We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident,  that  all  men  are 
created  equal,  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with 
certain  unalienable  Rights,  that  among  these  are  Life,  Liberty, 
and  the  pursuit  of  Happiness.  That  to  secure  these  rights 
Governments  are  instituted  among  Men,  deriving  their  just 
powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed,  that  whenever  any 
Form  of  Government  becomes  destructive  of  these  ends,  it  is 
the  Right  of  the  People  to  alter  or  to  abolish  it,  and  to  insti- 
tute new  Government,  laying  its  foundation  on  such  princi- 
ples and  organising  its  powers  in  such  form  as  to  them  shall 
seem  most  likely  to  effect  their  Safety  and  Happiness.  Pru- 
dence, indeed,  will  dictate  that  Governments  long  established 
should  not  be  changed  for  light  and  transient  causes ;  and, 
accordingly,  all  experience  hath  shown  that  mankind  are 
more  disposed  to  suffer,  while  evils  are  sufferable,  than  to 
right  themselves  by  abolishing  the  forms  to  which  they  are 
accustomed.  But  when  a  long  train  of  abuses  and  usurpa- 
tions, pursuing  invariably  the  same  Object,  evinces  a  design 
to  reduce  them  under  absolute  Despotism,  it  is  their  right,  it 
is  their  duty,  to  throw  off  such  Government,  and  to  provide 
new  Guards  for  their  future  security.  —  Such  has  been  the 
patient  sufferance  of  these  Colonies ;  and  such  is  now  the 
necessity  which  constrains  them  to  alter  their  former  Systems 
of  Government.  The  history  of  the  present  King  of  Great 


APPENDIX  513 

Britain  is  a  history  of  repeated  injuries  and  usurpations,  all 
having  in  direct  object  the  establishment  of  an  absolute 
Tyranny  over  these  States.  To  prove  this,  let  Facts  be  sub- 
mitted to  a  candid  world. 

{Here  follows  a  recapitulation  of  grievances?) 


10.   ARTICLES  IN  ADDITION  TO,  AND  AMENDMENT  OF  THE 
CONSTITUTION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA. 

(Went  into  effect  3rd  Nov.  1791.) 
(Macdonald's  Select  Documents?) 

ARTICLE  I. 

Congress  shall  make  no  law  respecting  an  establishment 
of  religion,  or  prohibiting  the  free  exercise  thereof;  or 
abridging  the  freedom  of  speech  or  of  the  press  ;  or  the 
right  of  the  people  peaceably  to  assemble,  and  to  petition 
the  Government  for  a  redress  of  grievances. 

(Here  follow  the  other  articles?) 
ii.   DECLARATIONS  DES  DROITS  DE  L'HOMME  ET  DU  CITOYEN 

DE    23    JUIN    1793 

Prefixed  to  Constitution  of  June  24,  1 793 

Le  peuple  francais,  convaincu  que  1'oubli  et  le  mepris  des 
droits  naturels  de  1'liomme  sont  les  seules  causes  des  malheurs 
du  monde,  a  r£solu  d'exposer,  dans  une  declaration  solennelle, 
ces  droits  sacres  et  inalienables,  afm  que  tons  les  citoyens, 
pouvant  comparer  sans  cesse  les  actes  du  gouvernement  avec 
le  but  de  Unite  institution  sociule.ne  selaissent  jamaisopprimer 
ct  avilir  par  la  tyrannic  ;  afin  que  le  peuple  ait  toujours  devant 
les  yeux  les  bases  de  sa  libert£  et  de  son  bonheur  ;  le  magistral, 
la  regie  de  ses  devoirs  ;  le  legislateur,  1'objet  de  sa  mission. 
En  consequence  il  proclame,  en  presence  de  1'Etre  Supreme, 
la  declaration  suivante  des  Droits  de  1'homme  et  du  Citoyen. 

Art.  rr.    Le  but  de  la  societ£  est  le  bonheur  commun.      Le 


514  APPENDIX 

gouvernement  est  institue'  pour  garantir  a  1'homrae  la  jouis- 
sance  de  ces  droits  naturels  et  imprescriptibles. 

2.  Ces  droits  sont  1'^galit^,  la  libert£,  la  surete^  la  propri^t^. 

3.  Tous  les  hommes  sont  e"gaux  par  la  nature  et  devant 
la  loi. 

4.  La  loi  est  1'expression  libre  et  solennelle  de  la  volonte 
ge"ne>ale ;  elle  est  la  meme  pour  tous,  soit  qu'elle  protege, 
soil  qu'elle  punisse ;  elle  ne  peut  ordonner  que  ce  qui  est 
juste  et  utile  a  la  soci£t6 ;  elle  ne  peut  deTendre  que  ce  qui 
lui  est  nuisible. 

5.  Tous   les    citoyens   sont   £galement   admissibles    aux 
emplois  publics.     Les  peuples  libres  ne  connaissent  d'autres 
motifs  de  preTe'rence  dans  leurs  elections  que  les  vertus  et 
les  talents. 

6.  La  libert^  est  le  pouvoir  qui  appartient  a  1'homme  de 
faire  tout  ce  qui  ne  nuit  pas  aux  droits  d'autrui :  elle  a  pour 
principe  la  nature,  pour  regie  la  justice,  pour  sauve-garde  la 
loi ;  sa  limite  morale  est  dans  cette  maxime  :  Ne  fat's  pas  a 
un  autrc  ce  que  tu  ne  veux  pas  qui  te  soit  fait. 

7.  Le  droit  de  manifester  sa  pens£e  et  ses  opinions,  soit 
par  la  voie  de  la  presse,  soit  de  toute  autre  maniere,  le  droit 
de  s'assembler  paisiblement,  le  libre  exercice  des  cultes,  ne 
peuvent  etre  interdits.      La  n6cessit£  d'£noncer  ses  droits 
suppose  ou  la  presence  ou  le  souvenir  re'cent  du  despotisme. 

8.  La  suret^  consiste  dans  la  protection  accorde'e  par  la 
soci£t£  a  chacun  des  ses  membres  pour  la  conservation  de  sa 
personne,  de  ses  droits  et  de  ses  proprie^s. 

9.  La  loi  doit  prot^ger  la  libert£  publique  et  individuelle 
contre  1'oppression  de  ceux  qui  gouvernent. 

10.  Nul  ne  doit  etre  accuse^  arret£  ni  detenu,  que  dans  les 
cas  de"termin£s  par  la  loi  et  selon  les  formes  qu'elle  a  preterites. 
Tout  citoyen,  appete  ou  saisi  par  l'autorit£  de  la  loi,  doit 
obelr  a  1'instant;  il  se  rend  coupable  par  la  resistance. 

IT.  Toute  acte  exerc^  contre  un  homme  hors  des  cas  et 
sans  les  formes  que  le  loi  determine,  est  arbitraire  et  tyran- 
nique ;  celui  contre  lequel  on  voudrait  1'ex^cuter  par  la 
violence,  a  le  droit  de  la  repousser  par  la  force. 

12.   Ceux   qui   solliciteraient,  exp6dieraient,  signeraient, 


APPENDIX  5 1 5 

exe'cuteraient  ou  feraient  ex£cuter  des  actes  arbitraires,  sont 
coupables,  et  doivent  etre  punis. 

13.  Tout  homme  £tant  pre'sume'  innocent  jusqu'a  ce  qu'il 
ait   e'te'    declare1    coupable,   s'il   est  jug6    indispensable   de 
1'arreter,  toute  rigueur  qui  ne  serait  pas    ndcessaire  pour 
s'assurer  de  sa  personne,  doit  etre  s£verement  re'prime'e  par 
la  loi. 

14.  Nul  ne  doit  etre  jug£  ou  puni  qu'apres  avoir  £te" 
entendu   ou  l£galement   appete,  et   qu'en   vertu   d'une  loi 
promulgue'e   ante"rieurement  au  d£lit.     La  loi  qui  punirait 
des  debits  commis  avant  qu'elle  existat  serait  une  tyrannic  ; 
1'effet  r£troactif  donn£  a  la  loi  serait  un  crime. 

15.  La  loi  ne  doit  de'cerner  que  des  peines  strictement 
et  e"  videmment   n^cessaires :    les  peines  doivent  etre  pro- 
portionn£es  au  d£lit  et  utiles  a  la  socie'te'. 

1 6.  Le  droit  de  proprie'te'  est  celui  qui  appartient  a  tout 
citoyen  de  jouir  et  de  disposer  a  son  gr£  de  ses  biens,  de 
ses  revenus,  du  fruit  de  son  travail  et  de  son  industrie. 

17.  Nul  genre  de  travail,  de  culture,  de  commerce,  ne 
peut  etre  interdit  a  1'industrie  des  citoyens. 

1 8.  Tout  homme  peut  engager  ses  services,  son  temps; 
mais  il  ne  peut  se  vendre  ni  etre  vendu.     Sa  personne  n'est 
pas  une  proprie'te'  alienable.     La  loi  ne  reconnait  point  de 
domesticity ;  il  ne  peut  exister  qu'un  engagement  de  soins 
et  de  reconnaissance  entre  1'homme  qui  travaille  et  celui 
qui  1'emploie. 

19.  Nul  ne  peut  etre  privd  de  la  moindre  portion  de  sa 
propri£td,  sans   son   consentement,  si  ce  n'est  lorsque   la 
n£cessit£  publique  tegalement  constate"e  Pexige,  et  sous  la 
condition  d'une  juste  et  pr£alable  indemnity. 

20.  Nulle   contribution   ne   peut   etre   dtablie  que  pour 
I'utilite"  ge"n£rale.     Tous  les  citoyens  ont  droit  de  concourir 
a  l'£tablissement  des  contributions,  d'en  surveiller  1'emploi 
et  de  s'en  faire  rendre  compte. 

21.  Les   secours   publics    sont   une    dette    sacr^e.      La 
soci^te"  doit  la  subsistance  aux  citoyens  malheureux,  soit  en 
leur  procurant  du  travail,  soit  en  assurant  les  moyens  d'ex- 
ister  a  ceux  qui  sont  hors  d'dtat  de  travailler. 


516  APPENDIX 

22.  L'instruction  est  le  besoin  de  tous.     La  societe  doit 
favoriser  de  tout  son  pouvoir  les  progres  de  la  raison  pub- 
lique,  et  mettre  1'instruction  a  la  portee  de  tous  les  citoyens. 

23.  La  garantie  sociale  consiste  dans   1'action  de  tous 
pour  assurer  a  chacun  la  jouissance  et  la  conservation  de  ses 
droits  :    cette  garantie  repose  sur  la  souverainete  nationale. 

24.  Elle  ne  peut  exister,  si  les  limites  des  fonctions  pub- 
liques  ne  sont  pas  clairement  de'termine'es  par  la  loi,  et  si 
la  responsabilite  de  tous  les  fonctionnaires  n'est  pas  assure"e. 

25.  La  souverainete'  reside  dans  le  peuple ;  elle  est  une 
et  indivisible,  imprescriptible  et  inalienable. 

26.  Aucune  portion  du  peuple  ne  peut  exercer  la  puis- 
sance du  peuple  entier ;  mais  chaque  section  du  souverains 
assembles  doit  jouir  du  droit  d'exprimer  sa  volonte  avec  une 
entiere  liberte. 

27.  Que  tout  individu  qui  usurperait  la  souverainete  soil 
a  1'instant  mis  a  mort  par  les  homines  libres. 

28.  Un  peuple  a  toujours  le  droit  de  revoir,  de  reformer 
et  de  changer  sa  constitution.     Une   generation   ne   peut 
assujetir  a  ses  lois  les  generations  futures. 

29.  Chaque   citoyen  a  un  droit  egal  de  concourir  a  la 
formation  de  la  loi  et  a  la  nomination  de  ses  mandataires  ou 
de  ses  agents. 

30.  Les  fonctions  publiques  sont  essentiellement  tempo- 
raires  ;  elles  ne  peuvent  etre  considers  comme  des  distinc- 
tions ni  comme  des  recompenses,  mais  comme  des  devoirs. 

31.  Les  deiits  des  mandataires  du  peuple  et  de  ses  agents 
ne  doivent  jamais  etre  impunis.     Nul  n'a  le  droit  de  se 
pretendre  plus  inviolable  que  les  autres  citoyens. 

32.  Le  droit  de  presenter  des  petitions  aux  depositaries 
de  1'autorite  publique  ne  peut,  en  aucun  cas,  etre  intendit, 
suspendu  ni  limite. 

33.  La  resistance  a  1'oppression  est  la  consequence  des 
autres  droits  de  l'homme. 

34.  II  y  a  oppression  contre  le  corps  social,  lorsqu'un 
seul  de  ses  membres  est  opprime  :  il  y  a  oppression  contre 
chaque  membre,  lorsque  le  corps  social  est  opprime. 

35.  Quand  le  gouvernement  viole  les  droits  du  peuple, 


APPENDIX  5 1 7 

1'insurrection  est  pour  le  peuple  et  pour  chaque  portion  du 
peuple,  le  plus  sacrd  des  droits  et  le  plus  indispensable  des 
devoirs. 


12.   REPORT  TO  THE  LONDON  CHAMBER  OF  COMMERCE  FROM 
THE  SPECIAL  COMMITTEE  ON  SECRET  COMMISSIONS,  1898 

{Reprinted  by  Permission.} 

To  the  Council  of  the  London  Chamber  of  Commerce, 

GENTLEMEN  —  Your  Committee  at  its  first  meeting  elected 
Mr.  David  Howard,  J.P.  (Vice-President  of  the  Chamber) 
and  Mr.  Walter  Hazell,  M.P.,  Chairman  and  Deputy-Chair- 
man respectively  of  the  Committee,  and  also  added  addi- 
tional representatives  of  Trade  and  Professional  Associations 
apart  from  the  Chamber  and  other  gentlemen  to  their 
number,  to  make  the  Committee  more  thoroughly  repre- 
sentative. No  less  than  twenty  of  the  Trade  Sections  of  the 
Chamber  were  represented  on  the  Committee  by  either  their 
Chairmen  or  Deputy-Chairmen. 

2.  With  a  view  to  obtaining  evidence  as  to  the  prevalence 
of  secret  commissions  in  the  various  trades,  and  the  extent  to 
which  the  same  obtained,  the  Committee  caused  communi- 
cations to  be  addressed  to  the  members  of  the  Chamber, 
the  various  Trade  Associations,  Chambers  of  Commerce,  and 
also  to  the  general  public,  by  the  insertion  of  a  letter  pub- 
lished in  the  various  trade  papers  and  the  press  generally, 
asking  for  information. 

3.  In  response  to  these  invitations,  your  Committee  re- 
ceived numerous  communications  on  the  subject,  both  writ- 
ten and  verbal.    Most  of  them  were  received  under  a  promise 
that  they  would  be  treated  as  strictly  private  and  confiden- 
tial, but  in  a  few  cases  the  persons  giving  the  information 
were  not  unwilling  that  their  names  should  appear. 

4.  Your  Committee  much   regret  that  in  this  way  only 
were  they  able  to  obtain  information,  as  they  are  fully  con- 
scious of  the  value  which  would  attach  to  communications 
made  public  with  all  particulars,  and  substantiated  by  the 


518  APPENDIX 

names  of  the  parties  communicating  the  same.  The  infor- 
mation thus  furnished  to  your  Committee  is,  of  course,  varied 
as  regards  its  character ;  in  some  cases  it  has  been  vague, 
in  other  cases  specific,  but  in  no  case  has  your  Committee 
come  to  a  conclusion  except  upon  evidence  which  they 
believe  to  be  trustworthy. 

5.  Your  Committee  conclude  from  the  evidence  before 
them  that  secret  commissions  in  various  forms  are  prevalent 
in  almost  all  trades  and  professions  to  a  great  extent,  and 
that   in   some   trades   the   practice   has   increased,  and   is 
increasing,  and  they  are  of  opinion  that  the  practice  is  pro- 
ducing great  evil,  alike  to  the   morals  of  the  commercial 
community  and  to  the  profits  of  honest  traders. 

6.  Bribes  in  all  forms,  including  secret  commissions,  owe 
their  existence  sometimes  to  the  desire  of  the  donor  to 
obtain  the  assistance  of  the  donee ;  sometimes  to  the  de- 
mand expressed  or  implied  of  the  donee  that  the  bribe  shall 
be  given. 

7.  In  the  first  class  of  cases  your  Committee  have  reason 
to  believe  that  the  bribe  is  often  given  unwillingly  and  with  a 
pang  of  conscience,  as  the  result  of  the  keen  competition  in 
trade,  and  in  the  fear,  too  often  well  founded,  that  unless 
given  other  less  scrupulous  rivals  will  obtain  an  advantage ; 
many   cases  have   come  before  your  Committee  in  which 
traders   have  believed   (often   though   not   perhaps  always 
without   reason)   that   their  entire  failure  to  obtain  orders 
has  been  due  to  the  want  of  a  bribe. 

8.  The  second  class  of  cases  are  those  in  which  the  recip- 
ient extorts  the  bribe  from  those  who  have  established  busi- 
ness relations  with  his  principal.     This  practice  is  rendered 
more  effective  and  oppressive  by  a  combination  between  the 
blackmailers.     The  servant  or  agent  who  demands  a  com- 
mission and    fails  to  receive  it,  not  infrequently  warns  his 
fellows  in  the  same  position  in  the  trade  against  the  honest 
trader,  who  thus  finds  himself  shut  out  from  dealing  with  a 
whole  circle  of  firms. 

9.  In   stating  the  result  of  the  information  received  in 
relation  to  the  several  trades,  and  also  to  some  professions, 


APPENDIX  519 

your  Committee  do  not  wish  to  suggest  that  these  practices 
are  by  any  means  universal  in  any  trade  or  profession. 

10.  The  bribes  given  naturally  take  many  forms ;  most 
generally  they  are  given  in  the  simple  form  of  a  money  pay- 
ment, the  worst  form  of  which  is  a  pro  rata  commission  on 
the  business  done ;  sometimes  in  the  shape  of  a  loan,  which 
places  the  borrower  at  the  absolute  mercy  of  the  lender, 
who,  if  he  be  dissatisfied  with  the  amount  of  custom  he 
receives,  can  call  in,  or  threaten  to  call  in,  the  loan ;  some- 
times the  bribe  consists  of  presents  of  plate,  wine,  or  other 
things,  and  not  infrequently  it  is  administered  in  the  form 
of  lavish  hospitality  and  treating. 

n.  One  frequent  practice  with  those  who  venture  to  put 
their  offer  of  bribes  on  paper,  is  to  describe  the  sum  offered 
as  a  "  discount,"  though  the  offer  is  made,  of  course,  not  to 
the  principal,  but  to  his  agent. 

12.  The  mass  of  corruption  which  the  evidence  before 
the  Committee  shows  to  exist  may  appear  to  some  persons 
so  great  and  complex  as  to  render  it  hopeless  to  struggle 
towards  purity.  Your  Committee  do  not  take  this  view 
of  the  matter.  They  believe  that  the  discussion  of  the  sub- 
ject and  the  publicity  of  some  cases  before  the  Law  Courts 
have  already  done  some  good  ;  and  they  recall  the  undoubted 
fact  that  corruption  formerly  existed  in  this  country  in  re- 
gions where  it  is  now  entirely  unknown ;  that  there  are 
cases  in  past  times  in  which  bribery  threw  a  stain  upon 
occupants  of  the  Bench  ;  that  at  one  time  a  large  number  of 
the  members  of  the  House  of  Commons  were  in  the  pay  of 
the  Crown ;  and  that  commissions  and  other  secret  forms 
of  bribery  abounded  in  Government  Departments.  Your 
Committee  accept  the  improvement  which  has  taken  place 
in  these  directions  in  the  last  fifty  years  as  a  fact  full  of 
encouragement  for  the  commercial  community  of  Great  Brit- 
ain. The  question  of  whether  it  is  desirable  to  introduce 
legislation  to  check  the  abuses  which  still  remain  has  been 
considered  by  your  Committee.  On  the  one  hand,  it  is 
forcibly  urged  that  the  Act  of  Parliament  which  makes 
criminal  all  bribery  occurring  in  the  case  of  officers  of 


520  APPENDIX 

Government  Departments  and  Public  Bodies  has  produced 
advantageous  results ;  and  that  many  persons  who  allow 
themselves  to  be  parties  to  an  illegal  transaction,  would 
shrink  with  fear  from  the  same  transaction  when  made 
criminal.  On  the  other  hand,  several  difficulties  present 
themselves  in  the  way  of  effective  legislation.  In  the  first 
place,  it  is  never  safe  for  criminal  legislation  to  advance 
very  far  beyond  the  public  conscience,  and  it  is  doubtful 
how  far  that  conscience  is  yet  enlightened  on  the  matter ; 
in  the  next  place,  it  would  be  a  matter  of  difficulty  to  define 
the  offences  with  adequate  breadth  without  including  acts 
of  an  innocent  or  trivial  character ;  and,  lastly,  occurs  the 
consideration  that  the  transactions  aimed  at  are  very  often 
secret,  and  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  obtain  confirmatory 
evidence,  and  unsafe  to  convict  on  a  single  unconfirmed  oath. 

13.  If  legislation  is  to  be  attempted,  it  appears  to  your 
Committee  that  it  should  render  criminal  the  payment,  the 
receipt,  the  offering,  and  the  solicitation  of  any  corrupt  pay- 
ment ;  and  also  the  giving  of  any  invoice  or  other  document 
calculated  to  enable  the  recipient  to  commit  a  fraud  upon 
his  principal,  and  that  it  is  expedient  that  such  legislation 
should  be  initiated  by  your  Chamber  or  supported  by  a 
petition  by  them. 

14.  Your  Committee  submit  that  the  question  of  the  de- 
sirability of  legislation  should  be  fully  and  immediately  con- 
sidered by  the  Chamber,  and  that  if  an  affirmative  conclusion 
be  arrived  at,  the  matter  should  be  remitted  to  a  Committee 
for  the  preparation  of  a  suitable  Bill,  with  such  assistance  as 
they  may  think  proper  to  invite. 

15.  But  meanwhile,  and  independently  of  legislation,  it 
appears  to  your  Committee  that  much  may  be  done  if  only 
the  community  will  rouse  themselves   to  the   task.     Your 
Committee  make  with  this  view  the  following  suggestions  :  — 

1 6.  The  more  frequent  enforcement  of  the  civil  rights 
of  the  principal ;  and  they  are  advised  that  these  rights  may 
be  thus  stated  :  — 

(a)  A  master  or  principal  may  recover  from  his  servant  or 
agent  everything  which  has  been  received  by  him  by 


APPENDIX  521 

way  of  secret  commissions  in  the  course  of  his  service 
or  agency,  and  if  the  accounts  have  been  settled 
between  the  principal  and  his  agent,  and  it  can  be 
shown  in  a  single  instance  that  the  accounts  are 
tainted  with  fraud  or  wilful  omission,  the  accounts 
may  be  reopened,  and  the  agent  be  required  to  re- 
state and  verify  them  by  oath. 

(£)  A  master  or  principal  may  as  a  general  rule  dismiss 
without  notice,  or  without  payment  in  lieu  of  notice, 
any  servant  or  agent  who  has  received  and  not  dis- 
closed a  bribe. 

(t)  A  contracting  party  may  repudiate  and  rescind  any  con- 
tract entered  into  through  an  agent  who  has  received 
a  bribe  from  the  other  side. 

(d)  A  contracting  party  may  recover  from  the  briber,  and 
the  bribed,  or  either  of  them,  any  sum  which  he  has 
paid  under  the  contract,  and  which  in  consequence 
of  the  bribe  was  in  excess  of  the  fair  or  market  price. 

(<•)  A  contracting  party  whose  agent  has  been  bribed  by  the 
other  party  during  the  execution  of  the  contract  may, 
in  spite  of  its  being  part  performed,  rescind  and  re- 
cover what  he  paid,  both  to  the  briber  and  the  bribed. 

17.  The  great  benefits  which  may  be  derived  from  the 
enforcement  of  the  appropriate  civil  remedy  have  been  for- 
cibly shown  by  the  experience  of  a  member  of  your  Commit- 
tee, Mr.  Oetzmann,  the  plaintiff  in  the  well-known  case  before 
the  Lord  Chief  Justice,  who  says: — [Here  follow  particu- 
lars.] 

18.  Your  Committee  further  suggest :  — 

That  all  professional  and  trade  bodies  (such  as  those  rep- 
resenting the  medical,  legal,  artistic,  and  other  professions 
and  trades)  be  recommended  to  make  an  emphatic  declara- 
tion on  the  subject  of  secret  commissions,  and  adopt  the 
course  already  taken  by  the  Royal  Institute  of  British  Archi- 
tects, the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers,  and  other  bodies,  by 
inserting  into  their  bye-laws  a  stipulation  that  any  member 
guilty  of  the  pernicious  practice  will  be  expelled  the  Society 
by  the  Council.  In  order  to  make  such  a  provision  effec- 


522  APPENDIX 

tive  this  would  require  the  aid  of  the  general  public,  as  well 
as  of  the  members  of  the  several  professions  and  trades. 

19.  That  traders  should  make  with  all  with  whom  they 
deal  a  definite  agreement,  similar  to  that  entered  into  by 
the  members  of  the  Calico  Printers'  Association,  undertak- 
ing that   nothing  in  the  form  of  a  bribe,  commission,  or 
present  shall  be  offered  or  given  by  them  to  any  one. 

20.  It  would  be  highly  advantageous  if  masters  and  prin- 
cipals when  entering  into  engagements  with  servants  and 
agents  would  call  attention  to  the  subject,  and  make  the 
refusal  of  all  bribes  an  express,  instead  of  an  implied  term 
of  the  contract  of  service  or  agency.    Such  an  explicit  stipu- 
lation would  probably  give  moral  as  well  as  legal  support  to 
servants  and  agents  in  resisting  the  temptation  when  offered 
under  the  pretence  of  a  thing  which  is  always  done. 

21.  Your  Committee  are  of  opinion  that  much  good  in 
many  cases  may  be  done  by  circulars  or  notices  warning 
against  the  payment  or  receipt  of  bribes.     In  one  case  a 
nurseryman  is  in  the  habit  of  issuing  a  notice  to  all  gardeners 
of  his  refusal  to  pay  commissions  on  orders ;  in  another  case 
another  of  your  Committee  having  discovered  the  misdeeds 
of  one  of  his  buyers  addressed  a  circular  on  the  subject  to 
all  the  firms  from  which  he  was  in  the  habit  of  buying.     In 
some  cases  notices  have,  your  Committee  believe,  been  circu- 
lated by  householders  amongst  the  shops  serving  them  warn- 
ing them  against  the  payment  of  commissions  to  the  servants 
employed,  and  corresponding  notices  by  the  tradesmen  to 
the  servants  of  the  houses  which  they  supply  would  be  useful. 

22.  Something  maybe  done  to  check  commissions  by  the 
exercise  of  increased  vigilance  on  the  actions  and  proceedings 
of  the  servants  and  agents  employed,  especially  of  buyers  and 
salesmen,  and  of  persons  employed  to  inspect  and  pass  goods. 
If  principals  would  always  inquire  for  themselves  why  goods 
were  refused,  or  why  advice  is  given  hostile  to  the  particular 
manufacturers  or  tradesmen,  they  would  sometimes  find  that 
the  defect  was  not  in  the  goods,  but  in  the  bribe.     This 
necessity  for  vigilance  applies  with  special  force  to  the  case 
of  large  institutions,  such  as  workhouses,  hospitals,  asylums, 


APPENDIX  523 

and  to  large  commercial  joint-stock  concerns,  such  as  rail- 
ways, and  to  co-operative  stores. 

23.  In  many  cases  buyers  and  others  who  are  employed 
in  very  responsible  positions,  and  have  very  important  duties 
to  perform,  are  paid  inadequate  salaries,  and  are  thus  ren- 
dered especially  liable  to  the  temptation  of  accepting  bribes. 
This,  in  our  opinion,  demands  the  careful  consideration  of 
the  heads  of  firms. 

24.  The  existence  of  a  great  system  of  technical  educa- 
tion throughout  the  country  should  be  utilised  as  a  means  of 
disseminating  clearer  views  than  often  exist  of  the  immorality 
of  the  giving  and  receiving  of  bribes.     The  managers  of 
these  institutions  would  no  doubt  give  the  necessary  per- 
mission and  allow  influence  in  the  right  direction  to  be 
brought  home  to  the  young  people  in  their  schools,  whether 
by  means  of  written  papers,  or  of  oral  addresses. 

25.  Lastly,  your  Committee  recommend  the  holding  of  a 
public  meeting  to  call  the  attention  of  the  public  and  all 
concerned  to  the  heinousness  of  the  system  of  secret  com- 
missions and  its  detrimental  effect  upon  morals  and  business. 

DAVID  HOWARD, 

Chairman  of  Committee, 

Adopted  by  the  Council  of  the  Chamber,  yth  July  1898. 

THOMAS  F.  BLACKWELL, 

Chairman  of  Council. 

KENRIC  B.  MURRAY, 
Secretary. 

N.B.  —  The  greatest  care  has  been  taken  by  the  Com- 
mittee to  see  that  the  statements  contained  in  the  Appen- 
dices have  been  made  on  reliable  authority,  but  necessarily 
the  Committee  and  the  Chamber  cannot  accept  responsi- 
bility for  their  absolute  accuracy. 


INDEX 


Abandonment  of  children,  amongst 
Greek  and  Roman  peoples,  230. 

Absolute  incapacity  of  natural  man 
for  good,  theological  concept  of, 
3°7-3°8. 

Act  of  Submission,  of  King  John  of 
England,  282  n. 

Act  of  Uniformity  of  1549,  324. 

Adams,  George  Burton,  description 
of  charge  of  simony  by,  276  n. 

Adams.  H.  C.,  on  the  rrsult  of  con- 
ditions of  an  unregulated  compe- 
tition for  commercial  supremacy, 
415-416. 

Agreement  of  the  People,  the,  105- 
106,  326 ;  text  of,  492-502. 

Alexandria  taken  by  Mohammedans, 
240. 

Alison,  Essays  on  the  Nature  and 
Principles  of  Taste,  cited,  191  n. 

Allen,  Grant,  191  n.,  408  n. 

America,  results  of  the  Reformation 
in,  333-334.  See  United  States. 

American  Journal  of  Sociology,  ex- 
tract from  A.  W.  Small's  article 
in,  8  n. 

Anabaptists,  suppression  of  religious 
error  by,  322. 

Ancestor  worship,  167-173,  408. 

Animals,  duration  of  life  of,  47. 

Answer  of  Henry  I V.  to  Gregory  VII., 
277 ;  text  of,  484-486. 

Archer.  William,  193  n. 

Arianism,  struggle  of,  with  tendency 
toward  doctrinrs  of  ancient  philoso- 
phies, 228  ;  attempt  of  Constantius 
to  impose,  on  Roman  empire,  266. 

Aristocracy,  government  of  United 
States  nt  period  of  the  Revolution 
virtually  an.  367. 


Aristotle,  20,  216 ;  J.  S.  Mill's  politi- 
cal conceptions  carry  reader  back 
to  those  of,  80 ;  conception  of,  of 
political  State,  179-180;  definition 
of  highest  good  and  of  happiness, 
186 ;  object  of  virtue  according  to, 
218  n. 

Art,  ascendency  of  the  present  in 
Greek,  189-190;  in  modern  world 
governed  by  influences  unknown 
to  the  Greeks,  192-193 ;  Count 
Tolstoy  on,  in  modern  world,  192, 
407. 

Ascendency  of  Puritans  in  England, 
effort  of  Cromwell  to  maintain, 
326-327. 

Ashley,  W.  J.,  on  Adam  Smith's 
unhistorical  attitude  in  reasoning, 
390  n. ;  concerning  trusts,  442, 

Atonement,  Christian  concept  of,  226. 

Attica,  slave  population  in,  at  begin- 
ning of  Peloponnesian  war,  182- 
183. 

Austin,  characteristics  of  school  of 
philosophy  developed  by,  5. 

Australia,  exclusion  of  Chinese  la- 
bour from,  458. 

Austria-Hungary,  population  of,  16  n. 


Bacon,  L.  W.,  333. 

Bagehot,  Walter,  on  military  charac- 
ter of  ancient  State,  181;  descrip- 
tion of  tendency  of  science  of 
political  economy  in  England  to 
become  one  of  Business  or  Great 
Commerce,  351. 

Balfour.  foundations  of  Belief,  cited, 
191  n. 

liccket,  Thomas,  262. 


525 


526 


INDEX 


Belgium,  population  of,  16  n. ;  estab- 
lishment of  universal  suffrage  in, 

367. 

Beloch,  statistics  of  slave  and  free 
population  in  Attica,  182-183. 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  5,  29,  384  n. ;  con- 
ception of,  of  State  and  society  as 
identical,  76 ;  "  the  interest  of  the 
community  the  sum  of  the  interests 
of  the  several  members,"  77 ;  Her- 
bert Spencer  compared  to,  90. 

Bert,  Paul,  407. 

Bill  of  Rights,  332. 

Bill  of  Rights  of  Virginia,  119;  text 
of,  508-511. 

Birds,  duration  of  life  of,  47. 

Blood-relationship  in  early  civilisa- 
tions, 170  ff. 

Bluntschli,  J.  K.,  on  the  ancient 
State,  180 ;  distinction  between  law 
and  morality  by  Romans,  250. 

Bonar,  James,  quoted,  10, 10  n. ;  con- 
cerning connection  of  social  and 
economic  progress  in  minds  of 
German  socialists,  u  n. 

Boniface  VIII.,  Pope,  283-284. 

Borgeaud,  Charles,  statement  of,  that 
social  contract  theory  did  not  origi- 
nate with  Rousseau,  104. 

Bosanquet,  Bernard,  10  n. 

Bossuet,  322. 

Bradford,  Gamaliel,  360,  433. 

Breeding,  scientific,  of  human  race, 
229-230,  363. 

Bright,  John,  Morley's  description  of, 

374- 
Bryce,  James,  242,  261,  266,  267,  275, 

333- 

Buckingham  Memoirs,  quoted!,  14  n. 

Bulls,  papal,  see  Clericis  Laicos  and 
Unam  Sanctam. 

Bunsen,  C.  C.  J.,  320. 

Burke,  Edmund,  and  Western  Lib- 
eralism, 121-123;  on  tne  social 
contract,  123. 

Bury,  J.  B.,  223,  234,  266. 

Butcher,  S.  H.,on  problem  of  recon- 
ciliation of  Hebraism  and  Hellen- 
ism, 208  n. 

Butterfield,  B.  H.,  quoted  concerning 
trusts  in  the  United  States,  433. 


Caird,  Edward,  9  n.,  164,  318  n.,328, 
404. 

Calvin,  321-322 ;  John  Morley  quoted 
on  wide  influence  of,  322  n. 

Calvinism,  effect  of,  in  Northern 
Europe,  321-323. 

Campanella,  302  n. 

Canon  law,  growth  of,  284  ff. 

Canossa,  the  pilgrimage  to,  279. 

Capital,  combinations  of,  in  the 
United  States,  428-437 ;  in  Eng- 
land, 438-440. 

Capital.  Marx's,  cited,  10  n. 

Capitulary  of  802,  Charlemagne's, 
268-270,  274. 

Carthage  taken  by  Mohammedans, 
240. 

Charlemagne,  241-243,  267. 

Charles  V.,  Emperor,  268,  293,  312. 

Charles  Martel,  239. 

Chartists,  transition  in  England  from 
old  Radicalism  to  modern  Liberal- 
ism due  to,  23  n. 

Child  labour,  regulation  of,  by  the 
State,  in  England,  418. 

Children,  exposing  of,  by  Greeks  and 
Romans,  230;  J.  S.  Mill's  proposi- 
tion concerning  restricting  num- 
bers of,  420. 

China,  modern  commercial  and 
economic  conditions  in,  459-460. 

Chinese,  exclusion  of,  from  Australia 
and  United  States,  458.  See  Yel- 
low races. 

Christianity,  theological  persecution 
as  the  outcome  of,  253,  293. 

Church,  R.  W.,  233,  276. 

Church,  struggle  between,  and  State, 
began  on  accession  of  Pope 
Gregory  VII.,  272;  civil  jurisdic- 
tion throughout  Europe  under  con- 
trol of  the,  284-287 ;  separation  of, 
from  State  in  America,  333. 

Cicero,  concerning  citizenship,  173 ; 
on  ascendency  of  the  present, 
204. 

Citizenship,  in  ancient  civilisations, 
166;  Cicero  on  duties  of,  173;  in 
ancient  city-state,  175 ;  exclusive, 


INDEX 


527 


the  product  of  ancestor  worship, 
176-177. 

City-State,  the,  in  Greek  and  Roman 
civilisations,  174-176. 

Clarke,  William,  quoted,  17,  23  n., 
104. 

Clericis  Laicos,  the  Bull,  262,  283- 
284 ;  resistance  of  Philip  of  France 
to,  287 ;  text  of,  487-489. 

Cluny,  the  monks  of,  243-244,  275, 
281-282. 

Cobden,  Richard,  Morley's  descrip- 
tion of,  374 ;  feeling  of,  concerning 
State  interference  with  economic 
interests,  424 ;  statement  of,  that 
capital  has  no  commission  to  ad- 
minister justice  to  the  world,  447. 

Companies'  Winding-up  Act,  436, 
438. 

Competition,  results  of  a  state  of  un- 
regulated, 415-417. 

Concordat  of  Worms,  279. 

Condillac,  74. 

Condorcet,  9,  15,  87. 

Conscience,  wide  interval  between 
private  and  business,  436-437. 

Constantino  V.,  266. 

Constantinople,  loss  of,  by  Christians, 
240. 

Constitution  of  the  United  States, 
106,333;  text  of  articles  in  addition 
to  the,  513. 

Constitutions  of  Clarendon,  262, 
284  n. 

Council  of  Ephesus,  223,  228. 

Council  of  Trent,  311. 

Council  of  Valence,  Third,  228. 

Council  of  Wo;  ins,  277. 

Courtney,  W.  L.,  153  n.,  193  n. 

Cousin,  Victor,  87,  189. 

Criticism,  system  of  party  govern- 
ment the  life-principle  of  all  effec- 
tive, 357. 

Cnti.fiif  of  fare  I\ta<on,  Kant's  sum- 
mary of  the  problt-m  discussed  in, 
400. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  period  of,  in  Eng- 
lancl,  326-328;  Professor  Gardiner 
quoted  on  the  real  purpose  of,  326- 

327- 
Cunningham,  W.,  quoted,  25  n. 


D 


D'Alembert,  15,  74,  118. 

Darwin,  quoted  concerning  natural 
increase  in  man,  35;  law  of  Natu- 
ral Selection  suggested  to,  by  read- 
ing Malthus,  36  n. ;  the  centre  of 
significance  to,  of  principle  of 
Natural  Selection  was  always  in 
present  time,  41-42 ;  quoted  con- 
cerning term  "struggle  for  exist- 
ence," 45  n. 

Darwin  and  after  Darwin,  Ro- 
manes', cited,  39,  51. 

Darwinian  theory,  the,  15;  has 
survived  all  criticism,  33;  first 
fundamental  principle  of,  the  enor- 
mous power  of  increase  in  life,  34- 
35 ;  second  principle  of,  individual 
variability,  with  capacity  of  trans- 
mission to  offspring  of  result,  35; 
close  connection  between,  and 
ideas  of  Manchester  school,  36  n. ; 
advance  on,  since  Darwin's  death, 

46-53- 
Darwinism,  Wallace's,  cited,  34,  35, 

38.  51,  63,  191. 
Davidson,  Professor,  studies  of  trade 

relations  between  England  and  her 

colonies,  373  n. 
Death,  of    individual    necessary    to 

serve    interest   of   the  whole,  56; 

considered  the  end  of  all   things, 

219;     for    theological    heterodoxy 

approved  by  Calvin,  321. 
Declarations  des  Droits  de  I' Homme 

et  du  Cttoyen  de  2j  jfum,  7793,  text 

<*  513-517. 

Declaration  of  Independence,  Ameri- 
can, 119;  text  of,  511-513. 

Deists,  the  English,  9,  405. 

Demoot.u-y.  position  of  current  theo- 
ries of.  71  ff. ;  origin  of  movement 
toward,  104  ff. ;  Western,  equality 
of  man  fundament.il  principle  of, 
107-108;  Nietzsche  on  modern, 
133-134;  meaning  of  modern,  is 
not  expressed  in  meie  theory  of 
political  or  economic  interests  in 
State.  140  ff. 

Development,  theory  of,  now  related 


528 


INDEX 


to  future,  not  the  past,  12;  first 
epoch  of  social,  145-146;  second 
epoch  of  social,  146-148;  the 
stages  of  economic,  in  Germany, 

385-389- 

Diderot,  9,  15,  74,  118-119. 
Dill,  Samuel,  quoted  on  religion  of 

ancient  Romans,  172. 
Dispute  between  the  emperors  and 

the  popes,  272-289,  484-486. 
Distribution  of  wealth  should  aim  at 

realising  political  justice,  380. 
Domination  of  yellow  races  predicted, 

28,  457-458. 
Donald,  Robert,  429  n. 
Dowden,  Professor,  193  n. 
Draper,  J.  W.,  240. 
Dumont,  Arsene,  quoted,  129. 
Duration  of  Life,  Weismann's,  cited, 

47,  48,  51,  55. 
Duty,   subordination   of  interest  to, 

considered    absurd    by   Bentham, 

77-78. 


Economic  Journal,  The,  extracts  from 
J.  Bonar's  article  in,  10,  ion.,  nn. 

Economics,  effect  in,  of  modern  con- 
ception of  responsibility,  377-385 ; 
German  Historical  School  of,  weak- 
ness for  data  rather  than  scientific 
deductions,  390  n. ;  State  interfer- 
ence in,  in  England,  418  ff.,  424. 

Edict  of  Nantes,  revocation  of,  315. 

Efficiency,  military,  social  efficiency 
in  first  stage  equivalent  to,  146. 
See  Selection,  military. 

Elephants,  increase  in  number  of,  if 
natural,  35. 

Emancipation,  the  recent  past  of  the 
evolutionary  process  has  been  a 
period  of,  411-412. 

Emperors  and  popes,  dispute  be- 
tween, 272-289,  484-486. 

Encyclopaedists,  influence  of  Locke 
over,  118-119;  regarded  concepts 
of  system  of  belief  of  our  civilisa- 
tion solely  from  political  stand- 
point, 120. 

Engels,  economic  theory  of,  n  n. 


England,  alliance  of  civil  and  re- 
ligious authority  in,  324-328  ;  effect 
of  recent  tendencies  in  English 
thought  on  science  of  jurisprudence 
m.  339  n- 1  State  interference  in 
economics  in,  418  ff.,  424 ;  combi- 
nations of  capital  in,  438-440. 

English  Utilitarians,  The,  Stephen's, 
quoted,  29  n.,  76,  384,  406. 

Epictetus,  212 :  conception  of  virtue, 
218  n. ;  on  suicide,  219-220. 

Epicureanism,  218-219. 

Epicurus,  204. 

Equality,  of  man  fundamental  politi- 
cal doctrine  of  modern  Democracy, 
107-108 ;  cause  of  the  present  state 
of  political,  369  ff. 

Essays  upon  Heredity,  Weismann's, 
cited,  47,  48,  55,  60,  61. 

Ethics,  as  one  of  two  grand  divisions 
of  the  moral  sciences,  339 n.;  rela- 
tionship between  political  economy 
and,  379  ff. 

Ethics,  Aristotle's,  179. 

Europe,  statistics  of  population  in, 
i6n. 

Evolution,  modern  doctrine  of,  the 
last  of  a  long  chain  of  sequences, 
2 ;  a  new  era  in  knowledge  began 
with  process  of  biological,  33; 
Darwinian  theory  of  biological, 
recapitulated,  34-39;  advance  in 
theory  of  biological,  since  Darwin, 
46  ff. 

Evolution  and  Ethics,  Huxley's,  cited, 
32  n. 

Exclusion  of  Chinese,  458-459. 

Excommunication,  power  of,  in 
Middle  Ages,  286. 

External  control,  duration  of  life 
according  to  theory  of,  46-47. 


Fairbairn,  A.  M.,  209  n.,  241. 

"  Felicific  calculus,"  well-ordered  con- 
duct in  the  individual  considered  a 
mere  matter  of,  77. 

Fichte,  8. 

Fischer,  Kuno,  300,  307. 


INDEX 


529 


Fittest,  survival  of  the,  see   Natural 

Selection,  law  of. 
Forrest,  J.  D.,  on  control  of  trusts, 

431.437- 

Fowler,  W.  W.,  on  the  ancient  city- 
state,  175-177. 

France,  population  of,  16  n. ;  course 
of  modern  development  of  thought 
in,  127  ff. ;  restriction  of  popula- 
tion in,  128-129. 

Franchise,  conferring  of,  on  bulk  of 
people,  in  England  and  the  conti- 
nent, 367 

"  Free  contract,"  theory  of,  417-418, 

445- 

Free  trade,  in  England,  real  cause  of, 
373-374 ;  largest  practical  applica- 
tion in  the  world  of,  in  the  United 
States,  391,  474. 

Freedom,  economic,  first  stages  to- 
ward, 385-389,  444. 

Freeman,  E.  A.,  160,  189,  242;  on 
citizenship  in  ancient  Slate,  182; 
statement  of,  that  the  age  appar- 
ently most  glorious  in  Greek  history 
was  an  age  of  Greek  decline,  213. 

French  Revolution  merely  an  inci- 
dent in  movement  of  Western 
thought  toward  Democracy,  104. 

Future,  natural  selection  continually 
discriminates  in  favour  of  interests 
of  the,  6;  relation  of  present  to, 
chiefly  considered  by  evolutionary 
school,  8;  theory  of  development 
now  related  to  the,  not  to  the  past, 
12;  interests  of  the,  overlie  those 
of  present,  53. 

"  Future  of  Liberalism,"  the,  quoted, 
372.  375- 


Gardiner,  S.  R.,  on  Calvinism  in 
England,  323  n. ;  quoted  concern- 
ing the  (jrand  Remonstrance,  326; 
concerning  Cromwell  and  the  as- 
cendency of  a  Puritan  oligarchy, 

326-327. 

Gardner,  Professor  Percy,  q  oted 
concerning  aesthetic  emotions  in 
Greece,  190-191. 


George,  Henry,  476. 

German  6ocial  Democracy,  Russell's, 
cited,  10  n.,  97, 130, 131, 132, 138  n., 
401  n. 

Germany,  current  doctrine  in  litera- 
ture of,  of  rivalry  of  interests  be- 
tween the  existing  members  of 
society,  10,  29-30;  population  of, 
16  n. ;  dominance  in,  of  theory 
of  omnipotence  of  the  State,  95  ff. ; 
the  meaning  of  Western  Liberalism 
in,  as  a  theory  of  material  interests, 
129-136;  condition  of,  after  the 
Reformation,  319-320;  establish- 
ment of  universal  suffrage  in,  367; 
the  economic  process  in,  386-393. 

Gibbon,  on  slave  and  free  population 
in  Roman  empire,  183. 

Giddings,  Professor,  93  n.,  444  n. 

Giffen,  Sir  R.,  on  position  of  the 
white  races  at  beginning  of  twen- 
tieth century,  16  n. ;  estimates  of 
increase  in  population  among 
European  peoples,  346. 

God-liypothesis,  the,  in  current 
French  thought,  129,  131  ff. 

Gorren,  Aline,  193. 

Gostwick,  Joseph,  406. 

Government,  collapse  of  parliamen- 
tary, in  Europe,  18 ;  efficiency  of 
the  party  system  in,  357. 

Gnostic  controversy,  the,  227. 

Grand  Remonstrance,  the,  325-326. 

Great  Britain,  statistics  of  population 
of,  16  n.;  principle  of  non-respon- 
sibility applied  to  expansion  of, 
450-454.  See  England. 

Great    Commerce,    science    of   the, 

351- 
Great  Industry,  consideration  of  the, 

431- 

Greece,  earliest  history  of,  considered, 
159  ff. ;  age  apparently  most  glo- 
rious in,  was  one  of  decline,  213; 
conception  of  virtue  in,  218. 

Green,  T.  II.,  9  n. 

Gregory  the  Great,  Pope,  urges  manu- 
mission of  slaves,  235. 

Gregory  VII..  Pope,  acute  phase  of 
stiugijl''  between  spiritual  and  tem- 
poral power  began  after  accession 


530 


INDEX 


of,  272 ;  text  of  decree  of,  deposing 
and  banning  Henry  IV.,  486-487. 
Grote,  5,  185  n. ;  conceived  the  State 
and  society  as  identical,  76. 

H 

Hallam,  Henry,  280,  285;  quoted  on 
the  effect  of  excommunication  in 
the  Middle  Ages,  286  n. 

Happiness  of  the  greatest  number 
chief  claim  of  Utilitarianism  to 
practical  value,  406  n. 

Harrison,  Frederic,  82  n. 

Hebraism  versus  Hellenism,  207-209. 

Hegel,  G.  W.  F.,  8,  244,  314;  "the 
terrible  discipline  of  self-know- 
ledge," 2. 

Helvetius,  C.  H.,  9,  74;  quoted  con- 
cerning theory  ol  science  of  moral- 
ity, 75- 

Henry  IV.,  dispute  between,  and 
Pope  Gregory  VII.,  272-279;  an- 
swer of,  to  Gregory  VII.,  in  full, 
484-486;  text  of  first  deposition 
and  banning  of,  486-487. 

Henry  VIII.  of  England,  268. 

Heraclius,  266. 

Herder,  8. 

Hildebrand,  385. 

Hobbes,  no,  116  f£ 

Holbach,  118. 

Holland,  population  of,  16  n. 

Holland,  Thomas  Erskine,  on  effect 
of  recent  tendencies  in  English 
thought  on  science  of  jurispru- 
dence in  England,  339  n. 

Holy  Roman  Empire,  the,  267-268. 

Huguenot  wars,  the,  315. 

Hume,  David.  8, 12, 125, 384  n. ;  sum- 
ming up  of  leading  tenet  of  school 
of  thought  represented  by,  400- 

401. 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  12;  distinction  made 
by,  between  cosmic  process  and 
ethical  process,  32  n. ;  belongs  to 
pre-Darwinian  school,  85  n. 

I 

Idleness  the  sister  of  freedom,  ac- 
cording to  Socrates,  188,  204. 


Increments,  unearned,  attacked  by 

English  Utilitarians,  476. 
Index  Expurgatorius,  the,  293. 
India,  British  capital  in,  453. 
Individual,  all  systems  of  philoso- 
phy have  hitherto  revolved  around 
interests  of,  3-5;  in  modern  so- 
ciology, 8  n.;  Natural  Selection 
works  solely  by  and  for  good 
of  each,  41-42 ;  interests  of  the, 
overlaid,  according  to  recent  views, 
by  those  of  a  majority  in  the 
future,  53;  death  of,  necessary  to 
serve  larger  interest  of  whole,  56 ; 
Bentham's  identification  of  social 
utility  with  self-interest  of,  77-78; 
sole  place  and  meaning  of,  in 
our  developing  system  of  order, 
141  ff. ;  subordination  of  the,  to 
existing  society,  in  ancient  civilisa- 
tions, 155-199;  establishment  of  an 
equilibrium  between,  and  his  sur-. 
roundings,  the  purpose  of  Epicu- 
reanism and  of  Stoicism,  218-220; 
Christian  conception  of,  220-226. 
Infanticide,  among  Greeks  and  Ro- 
mans, 230-232;  changed  attitude 
toward,  early  in  the  Christian  era, 
230-231. 

Inquiry  into  secret  commissions  in 
trade,  of  London  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce, 436;   text  of  report   from 
committee,  517-523. 
Inquisition,  the,  293,  313. 
Institutes  of  Justinian,    concerning 
slavery  in  Roman  empire,  184-185. 
Insufficiency  of  human  nature,  theo- 
logical concept  of  the,  307-308. 
Interest,  sacrifice  of,  to  duty,  absurd 

according  to  Bentham,  77-78. 
Internal  control,  duration  of  life  ac- 
cording to  theory  of,  47. 
International    relations,    attitude   of 

laissez-faire  school  toward,  445  ff. 
Italy,  current  doctrine  of  rivalry  of 
interests  between  existing  mem- 
bers of  society  in,  10  n.,  30;  popu- 
lation of,  16  n.;  the  Renaissance 
in,  299  ff. 

/us  civile,  the  Roman,  163,  177,  178, 
205,  214,  215. 


INDEX 


531 


/us gentium,  163,  177,  178,  214,  215. 
fus  Itallcum,  177. 
lus  Latinum,  177. 
fus  reformaiidi,  320. 

J 

Jacobi,  8. 

Japan,  entrance  of  Western  economic 
influences  into,  453-454 ;  prevailing 
labour  conditions  in,  454-455. 

Jerusalem  taken  by  Mohammedans, 
240. 

Johnston,  Charles,  348. 

Jurisprudence,  development  of  Ro- 
man, 214-216 ;  effect  of  recent  ten- 
dencies in  English  thought  on,  in 
England,  339  n. ;  difference  be- 
tween systems  of,  in  Latin  nations 
and  English  -  speaking  peoples, 
361  n. 

Justification,  Christian  concept  of, 
226;  by  faith,  308;  by  works,  308. 

Justinian,  184-185,  215,  266. 


K 


Kant,  Immanuel,  8,  399-403 ;  sum- 
mary of  the  problem  discussed  in 
the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  400. 

Kautsky,  1 1  n. 

Kinship,  theory  of,  as  a  factor  in  the 
evolutionary  process  in  society, 
444  n. 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  364  n. 

Knies,  385. 

Knox,  John,  work  of  Calvinism  in 
Scotland  carried  out  by,  323. 


Labour,  competition  of,  of  yellow 
races  prophesied,  28,  457 ;  child, 
417-418 ;  theory  of  "  free  contract " 
in,  417-418,445;  right  of  State  to 
interfere  in  question  of,  challenged 
by  Manchester  capitalists,  418-419 ; 
conditions  of,  in  Japan,  454-455; 
Chinese,  not  admitted  to  Australia 
and  United  States,  458. 


Laissez-faire,  principle  of,  chief  char- 
acteristic of  Manchester  school,  22 ; 
the  doctrine  of,  377-378 ;  trusts  are 
a  direct  consequence  of  spirit  pre- 
vailing under  standards  of,  429- 
430 ;  forecast  of  ultimate  phase  of 
competitive  process  of,  28,  457. 

Lasalle,  n  n. 

Laveleye,  338. 

Law  of  Natural  Selection,  see  Natural 
Selection. 

Law,  morality  and,  distinguished  first 
only  by  Romans,  250. 

Lay  investiture,  275  ff. 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  219,  237,  288,  291, 
293,  406;    quoted  concerning  the 
radical  change  in  views  on  matter 
of  suicide,  221. 
j  Leo  the  Isaurian,  266. 
I  Leroy-Beaulieu,    Paul,   quoted,  98 ; 
"the  State  the  sole   God  of  the 
modern  world,"  129. 

Lessing,  8. 

Liberalism  in  England,  struggles  nec- 
essary to  bring  about,  374-375. 

Liberalism,  Western,  see  Western 
Liberalism. 

Life  and  Letters  of  Darwin,  cited, 
15  n. 

Life  of  Richard  Cobden,  Morley's, 
quoted,  29  n.,  374. 

Life,  increase  of,  is  in  geometrical 
ratio,  34;  enormous  power  of  in- 
crease in,  the  first  fundamental 
conception  of  Darwinian  theory, 
34-35 ;  Weismann's  theory  of  dura- 
tion of,  46  ff. ;  duration  of,  accord- 
ing to  theory  of  external  control, 
46-47;  according  to  theory  of 
internal  control,  47;  Spencer's 
definition  of,  57  n.;  sacredness  of, 
in  modern  State,  compared  with 
ancient  world,  195 ;  difference  in 
attitude  toward,  between  Greek  and 
Roman  and  the  Christian  civilisa- 
tions, 220-232;  efforts  for  higher 
standards  of,  among  factory  hands, 
417-418.  454. 

I.innunis.  calculation  of,  concerning 
increase  in  plants,  34-35. 

List,  385. 


532 


INDEX 


Literature,  consideration  of  influence 
on,  of  modern  conception  of  re- 
sponsibility, 362-365. 

Lloyd.  H.  D.,  383  n.,  428. 

Ix)cke,  John,  quoted  concerning  the 
"state  of  nature,"  114 n.;  influ- 
ence of,  on  French  Encyclopaedists, 
118-119;  "On  the  Extent  of  the 
Legislative  Power,"  502-508. 

Logan,  W.  S.,  quoted  on  difference 
in  legal  systems  of  Latin  and  of 
English-speaking  nations,  361  n. 

Loria,  Professor  Achille,  ion.,  30. 


M 

Machiavelli,  300  ff. ;  the  ancient 
Roman  State  the  ideal  of,  301  n. 

Mackenzie,  J.  S.,  93,  406  n. 

Mahaffy,  J.  P.,  quoted,  174, 180, 188  n. 

Maine,  ^ir  Henry  Sumner,  104,  269, 
281,  366;  statement  that  modern 
popular  government  is  of  English 
origin,  105  ;  conviction  of,  that 
modern  social  philosophy  has  not 
explained  progress  of  Western 
world  and  stationary  state  of  past 
civilisations,  249-250;  quoted  con- 
cerning lack  of  desire  in  mankind 
to  improve  civil  institutions  after 
external  completeness  is  given  them 
in  some  permanent  record,  371- 

372- 

Malthus,  5,  15  n. ;  law  of  Natural 
Selection  suggested  to  Darwin  by 
reading,  36  n. ;  conceived  the  State 
and  society  as  identical,  76;  theory 
of  population  of,  420. 

Man,  natural  rights  of,  enumerated, 
108;  doctrine  of  native  equality  of, 
not  accepted  as  a  first  principle, 
108-109. 

Manchester  school,  the,  political  and 
economic  ideas  of,  are  predominant 
among  English-speaking  peoples, 
21-22;  theory  of,  22-23;  meaning 
of  phase  of  social  development 
represented  by,  24-28;  close  con- 
nection between,  and  Darwinian 
hypothesis,  36  n. ;  consideration  of 


effort  of.  to  produce  condition  of 
free  competition  in  the  world,  377- 
378, 414,  417  ff. ;  policy  of,  in  inter- 
national relations,  443  ff. 

Marcus  Aureiius,  view  of,  that  man's 
life  is  all  in  the  present,  204,220;  ob- 
ject of  virtue  according  to,  218  u. ; 
on  suicide,  220, 222. 

Marshall,  Alfred,  142-143. 

Marlel,  239. 

Marx,  Karl,  ion.,  11  n.,  375 n.,  464- 
465,476;  conception  of,  of  science 
of  society,  74  ;  Herbert  Spencer's 
views  and  those  of,  90  ff. ;  phase 
of  thought  of,  complementary  to 
Nietzsche's,  96-97  ;  attitude  of 
antagonism  to  whole  system  of 
religious  belief,  130-131. 

Marxian  socialism.  See  Socialism, 
Marxian. 

Massachusetts,  a  centre  of  colonies 
founded  on  the  alliance  of  civil 
authority  and  a  special  interpreta- 
tion of  religious  doctrine,  325. 

Massingham,  H.  W.,  193  n. 

Materialism,  French,  127-129  ;  Ger- 
man, 129-136. 

Mathews,  Shailer,  statement  of,  con- 
cerning impossibility  of  religious 
consciousness  not  seeing  incon- 
sistency between  its  teaching  and 
prevailing  economic  wrongs,  384. 

Methods  of  Ethics,  Sidgwick's,  cited, 

9D-.93- 

Mill,  James,  5 ;  assertion  that  no 
place  exists  in  theory  of  society  for 
a  moral  sense,  29;  theory  of,  of 
science  of  morality,  75;  conceived 
the  State  and  society  as  identical, 
76. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  2,  5,  384  n. ;  con- 
ception of,  of  the  State  and  society 
as  identical,  76  ;  science  of  the 
State  constitutes  whole  science  of 
society  according  to,  79  ff. ;  Her- 
bert Spencer  compared  to,  79  ff.,  90; 
proposition  of,  that  labourers  re- 
strict their  numbers,  419-420;  late 
acknowledgment  of  error  of  posi- 
tion in  labour  question,  419  n. 

Mirandola,  Pico  della,  300. 


INDEX 


533 


Moeller.  Wilhelm,  306,  sun.,  314, 
320,  321,  323.  325.  331. 

Mohammedanism,  rise  of,  238  ff. ; 
related  to  a  lower  stage  of  evolu- 
tionary process  than  the  Christian 
civilisation,  239  ;  permanence  of, 
secured  by  institution  of  polygamy, 
240;  Christianity  extinguished  by, 
in  Southern  and  Eastern  couniries, 
240. 

Mommsen,  on  citizenship  in  ancient 
civilisations,  163;  population  (free 
and  slave)  of  Roman  empire,  183. 

Montesquieu,  189. 

Monotheism,  first  outlines  of  concept 
of,  206-207. 

Morality,  science  of,  according  to 
James  Mill,  German  social  demo- 
crats, and  Helvetius,  75 ;  utilitarian 
theory  of,  75  ff. ;  first  distinction 
between  law  and,  by  Romans,  250. 

Morley,  John,  quoted,  29  n.;  on 
character  of  Calvin,  322  n.;  descrip- 
tion of  Bright  and  Cobden,  374. 

Motley,  John  Lothrop,  293,  294. 

Miinster,  experiment  at  government 
in,  322. 

N 

Nation-making,  the  tendency  toward, 

391.  393- 

Nationalities,  the  days  of,  are  num- 
bered, 394-395- 

Natural  Kights,  Ritchie's,  cited,  15, 
102,  104,  108,  253,  293,  318. 

Natural  rights,  Professor  Ritchie's 
enumeration  of,  108. 

Natural  Selection,  law  of,  implies 
acceptance  of  a  process  that  pro- 
duces most  effective  results,  3-4; 
continually  discriminates  in  favour 
of  interests  of  the  future,  6;  de- 
duced from  fundamental  Dar- 
winian conceptions,  36;  is  "the 
preservation  of  favoured  races  in 
the  struggle  for  life,"  36 ;  "  the 
doctrine  of  Malthtis  appii'-d  to  the 
whole  animal  and  vegetable  king- 
doms," 36-37 ;  significance  of.  v-  in 
the  present  according  to  Darwin, 
41-46;  the  advance  on  Darwin's 


view   since   his   death,  46-53;    as 

exemplified    by   peoples   of  early 

history,    155   ff.       See    Selection, 

military. 

Neo-Platonism,  227,  252,  300,  301. 
Netherlands,  religious  persecution  in 

the,  293-204. 
Nettesheim,  von,  302  n. 
Nietzsche,  Friedrick,  30,96-97,  117; 

on  Western  Liberalism,  133-136. 
Nomology,    as    one    of   two  grand 

divisions   of   the    moral  sciences, 

339". 
Non-intervention,     the    attitude    of, 

443-448. 
Non-responsibilitv,   principle   of,   in 

expansion  of  British  empire,  450- 

454;  applied  to  China,  459-460. 
Novicow,  J.,  quoted,  141  n. 


O'Connor,  Feargus,  23  n. 

Open-door  policy  in  China,  459-460. 

Oratory  of  Divine  Love,  the,  306. 

Ordinance  of  William  I.  of  England 
separating  spiritual  and  temporal 
courts,  262 ;  text  of,  483-484. 

Origin  of  Species,  cited,  34,  35 ; 
quoted  to  show  that  to  Darwin  the 
centre  of  significance  of  law  of 
Natural  Selection  was  in  present 
time,  41,  42;  quotation  from,  con- 
cerning term  "  struggle  for  exist- 
ence," 45  n.;  quoted  to  show 
Darwin's  early  position  in  matter 
of  colours,  markings,  etc.,  in  ani- 
mals, 63. 

Otto  I.,  Emperor,  267. 


Party  government,  rise  of  the  system 
of,  356-3^7 ;  efficiency  of,  in  cause 
of  progress,  357 ;  made  possible  by 
the  principle  of  tolerance,  359  ff., 
468. 

Patna  fotestas,  rights  of  the,  195,  205, 
230. 

Paul  IV.,  Pope.  203. 

Pearson,  Charles  H.,  predicts  com- 


534 


INDEX 


petition  of  yellow  races  in  labour 
market,  28;  forecast  of  ultimate 
phase  of  laissez-faire  competitive 
process,  457-458. 

Pearson,  Karl,  301,  322. 

Pelagian  controversy,  the,  223,  228- 
229. 

People,  all  authority  ultimately  resi- 
dent in  the,  109. 

Perrin,  Ami,  revolt  of,  321. 

Persecution,  religious,  as  the  outcome 
of  Christianity,  253 ;  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  293-294. 

Ph&drus,  Greek  conception  of  truth 
and  justice  expressed  in  the,  194, 
205. 

Philip  of  France,  struggle  of,  with 
papacy,  287. 

Philip  II.  of  Spain,  293. 

Pilt,  on  the  rights  of  princes,  14. 

Plato,  J.  S.  Mill's  political  concep- 
tions and  those  of,  80 ;  case  of,  to 
illustrate  difference  between  an- 
cient and  modern  standards,  194, 
254  n. ;  object  of  virtue  according 
to,  218  n. ;  on  scientific  breeding 
of  the  human  race,  363. 

Plethon,  Gemistos,  302. 

Politics,  influence  of  modern  con- 
ception of  responsibility  in,  366-377. 

Politics,  Aristotle's,  20,  179,  186,  188. 

Pollock,  Sir  Frederick,  on  Edmund 
Burke,  122;  brings  out  fact  that 
theological  persecution  is  of  en- 
tirely recent  origin,  253;  quoted 
concerning  controversy  between 
temporal  and  spiritual  power,  271, 
274. 

Polygamy,  Mohammedan  rule  se- 
cured by,  240. 

Pomponatius,  Pietro,  301  n. 

Popes,  dispute  between  emperors 
and,  272-289,  484-486. 

Population,  Sir  Robert  Giffen's  fig- 
ures concerning,  16  n.,  346;  re- 
striction of,  advocated  by  J.  S. 
Mill,  82,  125,  420;  restriction  of, 
in  France,  127-129 ;  slave  and  free, 
in  Attica,  182-183;  in  Roman 
empire,  183;  increase  in,  among 
European  peoples,  during  nine- 


teenth century,  346-347 ;  theory  of, 
propounded  by  Malthus,  420. 

Porphyry,  302. 

Portugal,  population  of,  16  n. 

Potter,  Bishop  H.  C.,  description  of 
scene  in  Japan,  454-455. 

Presbyterians,  persecution  of,  in 
Scotland,  323. 

Present,  relation  of,  to  the  past  con- 
sidered by  English  Utilitarians  the 
central  feature  of  our  social  prog- 
ress, 7-8;  in  reality  the  meaning 
of  relation  of  the,  to  the  future  is 
controlling  principle  of  our  social 
progress,  8 ;  principles  of  the  Man- 
chester school  a  vehicle  for  express- 
ing ascendency  of  the,  24 ;  centre 
of  gravity  in  evolutionary  concep- 
tion no  longer  in  the,  64;  ascen- 
dency of  the,  in  ancient  civilisations, 
155-199;  man's  life  lies  all  in  the, 
according  to  Marcus  Aurelius,  204. 

Presidency  of  United  States,  the,  and 
party  government,  358  n. 

Prince,  The,  of  Machiavelli,  301  n. 

Principles  of  Biology,  Spencer's,  cited, 
8  n.,  46,  47. 

Principles  of  Ethics,  Spencer's,  cited, 
7  n.,  8  n.,  48,  89,90,  91  n. 

Principles  of  Psychology ,  cited,  47,  87. 

Principles  of  Sociology,  Spencer's, 
cited,  7  n.,  89,  168  n. 

Progress,  social,  science  of,  72- 
73;  social,  predominant  idea  of, 
throughout  nineteenth  century, 
83;  party  government  as  a  cause 

of,  357- 
Projected    Efficiency,    principle    of, 

summarised,   65. 
Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  Green's,  cited, 

9n. 
Property   qualification    for   exercise 

of  political  power  in  United  States, 

.   367- 

Ptolemaic  system,  analogy  drawn  be- 
tween former  social  theories  and 
the,  100. 

"  Puritanism  and  English  Litera- 
ture," Dowden's  article  on,  cited, 
193  n. 

Puritans,  the,  in  England,  325-328. 


INDEX 


535 


Quinet,  deduction  of  theory  of  socio- 
logical principles  from  introspec- 
tive study  of  individual  mind,  87. 


Ranke,  293,  306,  311  n. 

Reconciliation,  theological  concept 
of,  307-308. 

Reformation,  the,  an  effort  to  pro- 
ject the  sense  of  individual  respon- 
sibility beyond  the  principle  of 
authority  conceived  as  resident  in 
the  Church, 310-3 ii ;  causes  of  lack 
of  effect  of,  on  Southern  peoples, 
314;  spectacle  of  the  world  after, 
316-317;  results  of,  on  the  con- 
tinent, 319-322;  in  Scotland,  323 ; 
in  England,  324-332 ;  in  America, 
333-338. 

Religion,  views  of  Encyclopaedists 
on,  120  n. ;  modern  French  con- 
ception of,  according  to  Renan, 
Dumont,  and  Leroy-Beaulieu,  127- 
129;  Marx's  attitude  toward,  130- 
133 ;  in  ancient  civilisations,  164  ff. ; 
Spencer  considers  ancestor  wor- 
ship at  root  of  every,  168  n. ;  Chris- 
tian, one  distinguishing  character- 
istic of,  217 ;  identity  of,  and  law, 
in  ancient  civilisations,  249-251. 

Renaissance  in  Italy,  Symonds',  cited, 

2-3- 

Renaissance,  the  Italian,  299  ff. 

Renan,  views  of,  on  religious  beliefs, 
128-129. 

Republic,  Plato's,  187,  218,  363. 

Restriction  of  population,  advocated 
by  J.  S.  Mill,  82,  125,  420;  in 
France,  127-129. 

Ricardo,  David,  5;  conception  of,  of 
State  and  society  as  identical,  76 ; 
assumption  of  potency  of  uncon- 
trolled competitive  forces  to  regu- 
late entire  social  process,  417-418. 

Ritchie,  David  G.,  15  n.,  102,  293, 
318  n. ;  enumeration  of  natural 
rights  by,  108;  "persecution  .  .  .' 
the  outcome  of  Christianity,"  253. 


Romanes,  G.  J.,  quoted  concerning 
Darwinian  theory,  39,  51. 

Rome,  consideration  of  the  history 
of,  159-160 ;  religion  of,  165  ff. ; 
development  of  jurisprudence  in, 
214-216 ;  the  State  of  ancient,  the 
ideal  of  Machiavelli,  301. 

Roscher,  385. 

Rosebery,  Lord,  241. 

Rousiers,  Paul  de,  quoted  concern- 
ing development  of  monopolies  in 
United  States,  429-430. 
!  Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques,  15 ;  concep- 
tion of,  of  science  of  society,  74; 
theory  of  social  contract  did  not 
originate  with,  104;  quoted  con- 
cerning an  established  political  re- 
ligion, 120  n. 

Russell,  Bertrand,  10  n.,  401  n. ;  on 
German  Social  Democracy,  97, 
130-131,  132  n.,  138  n. 

Russia,  population  of,  16  n. 


St.  Augustine,  quoted,  221,  222;  in- 
fluence of,  on  Charlemagne,  242- 

243- 

St.  Bartholomew,  massacre  of,  315. 
Salvation,  Christian  concept  of,  226. 
Sandars,    Thomas    Collett,    quoted, 

177-178. 
Sayce,  Professor  A.  H.,  concerning 

Darwinian  theory,  39  n. 
Scandinavian  countries,  statistics  of 

population  of,  16  n. 
Schelling,  8. 
Schiller,  F.  C.  S.,  on  effect  for  evil  of 

capitalistic  influences  in  American 

academic  endowments,  435. 
Schmoller,    Gustav,    the    economic 

process  in  Germany  described  by, 

385-393- 

Schopenhauer,  12,  191  n. 

Science  of  Language,  Saycc's,  cited, 
39  n. 

Scotland,  Calvinism  in,  323. 

Secret  commissions  in  trade  inquiry, 
436;  text  of  report  to  Ix>ndon 
Chamber  of  Commerce  from  spe- 
cial committee,  517-523. 


536 


INDEX 


Seebohm,  Hugh  E.,  on  ancestor  wor- 
ship and  blood-relationship,  167, 
171-173. 

Seeley,  standpoint  in  comparing  an- 
cient and  modern  States,  185  n. 

Selection,  military,  process  of,  in 
early  history,  155  ff.,  173-174,  263, 
466-467. 

Self-interest,  principle    of,  asserted, 

9- 

Self-stultification,  increasing  ten- 
dency toward  a  condition  of,  383, 

436-437. 

Seneca,  212;  on  the  exposing  of  chil- 
dren, 230. 

Servetus,  321. 

Shaw,  Bernard,  193  n. 

Shipley,  A.  E.,  47. 

Sidgwick,  Henry,  9  n.,  92-95 ;  exami- 
nation of  relationship  between  polit- 
ical economy  and  ethics,  379-381. 

Simony,  defined,  276  n. 

Slavery  in  ancient  States,  182-183; 
Christian  civilisation  and  the  in- 
stitution of,  232-235. 

Small,  Albion  W.,  quoted  concern- 
ing individual  in  modern  sociol- 
ogy, 8  n. 

Smith,  Adam,  history  of  development 
of  principles  of  modern  Democracy 
began  with,  75-76;  despaired  of 
free  trade  ever  becoming  a  fact, 
373-374;  frame  of  mind  of,  essen- 
tially unhistorical,  390  n. 

Socrates,  contempt  of,  for  work,  188, 
204;  standpoint  of  his  time  shown 
in  the  charge  against,  254  n. 

Socialism,  Marxian,  subject  of  reli- 
gion logically  eliminated  by,  121  n., 
130-133 ;  a  complete  self-contained 
philosophy  of  human  life  and  so- 
ciety, 130-131 ;  the  fundamental 
maxim  of,  401 ;  interpretation  by, 
of  all  principles  of  social  develop- 
ment in  terms  of  an  economic 
struggle,  464-465. 

Socialists,  German,  connection  of 
social  and  economic  progress  in 
minds  of,  u  n. ;  the  standpoint  of, 
96  ff.  See  Marx,  Karl. 

Society,  science  of,  72  ff. ;  according 


to  Rousseau  and  Marx,  74;  James 
Mill  and  Helvetius,  75. 

Sociology,  the  individual  in  modern, 
8n. 

Sohm,  Rudolph,  177,  181,  215. 

Spain,  population  of,  16  n. ;  estab- 
lishment of  universal  suffrage  in, 
367- 

Spencer,  Herbert,  constructed  theory 
of  development  around  principle 
that  central  feature  of  our  social 
progress  consisted  in  struggle  be- 
tween present  and  past,  7,  401 ; 
social  philosophy  of,  practically 
the  same  as  J.  S.  Mill's,  84  ff.; 
belongs  to  pre-Darwinian  school, 
85  n.;  no  discernment  in  theories 
of,  of  sociological  process  whose 
controlling  meaning  is  in  future, 
87  ff. ;  common  views  with  the 
Marxian  socialists,  90  ff. ;  keeps  in 
sight  the  aspect  of  progress  as 
struggle  between  past  and  present, 
126;  theory  of,  concerning  ances- 
tor worship,  i68n. ;  explanation 
of,  of  process  under  consideration 
really  empty  of  meaning,  407  ff. 

Spinoza,  Hobbes'  theory  of  govern- 
ment and  conduct  developed  by, 
117-118. 

Spooner,  review  of  history  of  theory 
of  wages'  fund,  419  n.,  420. 

Standard  Oil  Trust,  428-430. 

Stanwood,  Edward,  358,  360. 

State,  conception  of  the,  according  to 
Manchester  school,  23 ;  a  deep- 
seated  line  of  demarcation  between 
interests  of,  and  those  of  society  in 
process  of  evolution,  72-73;  pre- 
vailing theory  of  social  progress  is 
that  interest  of  State  and  that  of  so- 
ciety are  one  and  the  same,  73  ff. ; 
science  of  the,  constitutes  whole 
science  of  society  according  to  J. 
S.  Mill  and  the  Utilitarian  school, 
79  ff. ;  Locke's  influence  in  devel- 
opment of  modern,  in;  the  an- 
cient, 171  ff. ;  true  spirit  of  the 
ancient  Roman,  178  ;  Machiavelli's 
ideal,  301  n. ;  Aristotle's  conception 
of,  186-187 :  Plato's  ideal,  187 ;  at- 


INDEX 


537 


tempt  of  followers  of  Reformed 
Church  to  control  the,  in  countries 
of  Northern  Europe  and  England, 
319-327;  separation  of,  from 
Church  in  America,  333,  513. 

State  of  nature,  Locke's  conception 
of,  113-114. 

State-making,  the  tendency  toward, 

391.  393- 
Stephen,  Leslie,  ion.,   100,  384  n. ; 

quoted    concerning  James    Mill's 

polemic  against  moral  sense  theory, 

29  n. 

Stephenson,  Andrew,  181. 
Stoicism,  Roman,  204,  213,  218-219, 

301. 

Strachey,  J.  St.  Loe,  quoted,  328  n. 
Struggle  for  existence,  Darwin  quoted 

concerning  the  term,  45  n. 
Studies     in     Pessimism,     Schopen- 
hauer's, cited,  12. 
Suffrage,  establishment  of  universal, 

in  European  countries,  367. 
Suicide,   doctrine   of    legitimacy  of, 

219-220,    222;     in    the    Christian 

philosophy,  221  ff. 
Survival  of  fittest,  as  exemplified  by 

peoples  of  early  history,  155  ff. 
Sweden,   dissenters   from    Reformed 

Church  banished  in,  322. 
Switzerland,  condition   of,  after  the 

Reformation,  320-322. 
Symonds,  John  Addington,  2-3. 
Synthetic  Philosophy,  Spencer's,  7  n., 

84  ff. 
System  of  l^gic,  J.  S.  Mill's,  cited,  2, 

9n. 


Tacitus,  cited.  178. 

Taylor,  Graham,  437;  quoted  on  the 
social  question  in  the  United 
States,  383-384. 

Telesio.  300,  302  n. 

Territory,  drvelopment  of  the  eco- 
nomic town  into  the,  388 ;  not  to 
advantage  of,  to  merge  into  the 
State,  444. 

Tertullian,  222.  237-238. 

Theory  of  Population,  Malthus'.  15  n. 


Three  Essays  on  Religion,  J.  S. 
Mill's,  cited,  9  n. 

Tolerance,  principle  of  party  gov- 
ernment made  possible  by,  359  ff., 
468. 

Toleration  Act  of  1689,  324,  332. 

Tolstoy,  Leo,  on  art  in  the  modern 
world,  192,  407. 

Tours,  battle  of,  239. 

Town,  economic  conditions  of  early 
mediaeval,  386-388. 

Townsend,  M.,  209  n. 

Treatise  on  Human  Nature,  Hume's, 
cited,  8  n. 

Trusts,  in  the  United  States,  428 ;  a 
direct  consequence  of  spirit  pre- 
vailing under  standards  of  laissez- 
faire  competition,  429-430. 

Turgot,  1 20  n. 

Twilight  of  the  Idols,  Nietzsche's, 
cited,  30,97,  117,  133,  134. 

Two  Treatises  of  Government,  John 
Locke's,  quoted,  113-114,  115. 


U 


"  Uebermenschen,"  the,  30,  97. 

Unam  Sanctam,  the  Bull,  287,  288 ; 
text  of,  489-491. 

United  Kingdom,  population  of,  16  n. 

United  Stairs,  population  of,  i6n. ; 
separation  of  Church  and  State  in, 
333-334;  dissociation  of  religious 
consciousness  from  forms  of  civil 
authority  exists  side  by  side  with 
intense  belief  in  accepted  form  of 
religion  associated  with  our  civil- 
isation, 341-342;  intensity  of  the 
economic  process  in  the,  353-354, 
391;  immediate  subsidence  of  ex- 
citement after  pany  struggles  in, 
360;  government  of,  aristocratic  at 
period  of  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence. 367;  as  largest  free- 
trading  area  in  the  world,  391, 
474;  trade  monopolies  in,  428  ff. ; 
description  of  conditions  under 
which  monopolies  developed  in, 
430  n. ;  effect  for  evil  in  political 
evolution  of,  of  capitalistic  influ- 


538 


INDEX 


ences  in  academic  endowments, 
435;  exclusion  of  Chinese  labour 
from,  458. 

Utilitarianism,  J.  S.  Mill's,  cited,  gn. 

Utilitarianism,  as  represented  by  the 
Mills  and  by  Spencer,  7. 

Utilitarians,  English,  conceived  that 
central  feature  of  our  social  prog- 
ress consisted  in  the  struggle  be- 
tween present  and  past,  7;  have 
run  their  course,  17;  theory  of 
morality  of,  75  ff. ;  English,  science 
of  the  State  constitutes  whole 
science  of  society  according  to, 
79  ff. ;  early  theories  of,  carried  to 
full  logical  application  in  views  of 
German  Social  Democrats,  96. 
See  Mill,  John  Stuart. 

Utility,  origin  of  morality  in,  78  n. 


Vanini,  302. 

Variation,  individual,  second  funda- 
mental principle  of  Darwinian 
theory,  35 ;  the  phenomenon  at 
base  of  all  progress,  55. 

Venice,  peace  of,  280. 

Vice,  regarded  .is  a  "  miscalculation 
of  chances  in  estimating  value  of 
pleasures  and  pains,"  81. 

Virginian  Declaration  of  Rights,  119 ; 
text  of,  508-511. 

Virtue,  conception  of,  in  Greece  and 
Rome,  218-220. 

Voltaire,  12, 15,  302. 

W 

Wages'  fund,  theory  of  a,  419-420. 

Wallace,  Alfred  Russel,  on  geomet- 
rical ratio  of  increase  in  life,  34; 
quoted  concerning  law  of  Natural 
Selection,  38 ;  grounds  for  rejecting 
Darwin's  view  as  to  origin  of  col- 
ours, markings,  etc.,  in  animals, 
62  n. 

Wallon,  H.,  statistics  of  slavery  in 
Attica,  183. 


War,  idealised  in  ancient  State,  188. 

Wealth,  distribution  of,  in  well- 
ordered  State,  should  aim  at  real- 
ising political  justice,  380. 

Wealth  of  Nations,  history  of  develop- 
ment of  principles  of  modern  de- 
mocracy began  with,  75-76. 

Webb,  Beatrice,  382. 

Webb,  Sidney,  382. 

Weismann,  August,  discussion  of 
causes  determining  duration  of 
individual  existence  by,  46  ff. 

Western  Liberalism,  origin  of,  before 
the  French  Revolution,  104-105; 
progress  of,  in  English-speaking 
countries,  107  ft;  Locke  and 
Hobbes  and,  110-117;  in  France, 
127-129;  in  Germany,  129-136; 
meaning  of,  cannot  be  expressed 
in  mere  theory  of  political  or  eco- 
nomic interests  in  State,  140  ff. ;  as 
a  political  creed,  is  one  of  sacrifice, 
374-375;  conceived  as  outside  of 
and  superior  to  all  theories  of  the 
State,  376. 

What  is  Art?  Tolstoy's,  192  n. 

Wibert,  Anti-Pope,  277. 

William  I.  of  England,  ordinance 
dividing  secular  from  ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction,  262,  483-484. 

Woman  labour  in  Japan,  454-456. 

Women,  confiscation  of,  by  Moham- 
medan conquerors,  240. 

Worms,  Council  of,  277 ;  Concordat 
of,  279. 


Yellow  races,  competition  of,  in  la- 
bour market  predicted,  28;  pre- 
dominance of,  prophesied,  457- 
458. 


Zarathustra,   Nietzsche's,    cited,  30, 

134- 
Zeno,  266. 


SOCIAL  EVOLUTION 

By  BENJAMIN   KIDD. 

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